Rajkumar Banerjee

Biography

Dr. Rajkumar Banerjee obtained his Ph.D. from Indian Institute of Chemical Technology in 2000 while working under the guidance of Dr. Arabinda Chaudhuri in the field of developing cationic liposomal gene delivery systems. Thereafter he obtained his post-doctoral experience in the Lab of Prof. Leaf Huang in University of Pittsburgh, USA (2000-2003) in the field of developing targeted delivery systems for cancer. He rejoined his Alma Mater (IICT) in 2003 as Fellow Scientist and is now continuing in the same Institute as Principal Scientist. His research group comprises students of mostly organic chemistry background. Students of biotechnology and pharmacy background also apply to his laboratory. In his group, PhD thesis requirement allows a student to perform organic chemical synthesis, biomaterials development, cellular and molecular biology studies and in vivo preclinical studies. These help them develop multidisciplinary research outlook.

Research Interest

Our research is focused around understanding molecular pathogenic roles of nuclear hormone receptors in cancer and in tumor microenvironment. For this we design and develop lipid based molecules and formulations as probing entity. Toward achieving this we developed anti-breast cancer drug and drug sensitizing cationic lipid formulation. The drug-sensitizing formulation, as a platform technology is useful to enhance the anticancer activity of both hydrophobic and hydrophilic drugs, thereby value adding or enhancing the anticancer potential of drugs, to which many cancers have become resistant to.