KKM Chemical Biology Lab
Organic Chemistry Section
Chemical Sciences and Technology Division
CSIR-National Institute for Interdisciplinary Science and Technology
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Kaustabh Kumar Maiti obtained a B.Sc. in Chemistry (Honours) and M.Sc. in organic chemistry (specialization) from the University of Calcutta (India) and was thereafter awarded a Ph.D. from the same university in the year 2001. His Ph.D. work was based on the development of synthetic methodologies of regio- and stereo-selective nitrogenous heterocycles by 1,3-dipolar nitrone cycloaddition with a wide variety of synthetic and naturally occurring diplorophiles.
Dr. Maiti started his professional career in leading pharmaceutical R&D in India, 2000-2003 (Alembic Ltd. and Sun Pharmaceuticals Industries Ltd.) where he worked in the process development of generic drugs and drug discovery programs. After industrial training, he joined postdoctoral research at Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH, 2003-2007), South Korea, with Prof. Sung-Kee Chung in the Department of Chemistry and developed a series of novel non-peptide molecular transporters using inositol and carbohydrates as scaffolds.
Dr. Maiti moved to the Complex Carbohydrate Research Center (CCRC), The University of Georgia, USA to continue his second postdoctoral research. In CCRC he worked with Prof. Geert-Jan Boons’s group (2007 -2009) in the field of glycopeptide, structural aspects of peptidoglycan, and LPS. Before joining at CSIR-National Institute for Interdisciplinary Science and Technology (CSIR-NIIST), Thiruvananthapuram, Dr Maiti was appointed at Singapore Bioimaging Consortium (under Biomedical Sciences Institute, A*STAR, Singapore) as a Senior Researcher (2009-2012). He developed a series of Raman active molecular probes and surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) nanoparticle probes as diagnostic tools for the detection and imaging of cancer cells and evaluated multiplex cancer biomarker detection in animal models.
His current research interest focuses on the development of diagnostics and Nano-theranostics (Nanomedicine) with multimodal combination therapy which includes chemotherapy, chemo-dynamic therapy, phototherapy (PTT, PDT), and immunotherapy for cancer and other non-communicable diseases including neurodegenerative disorders. In the diagnostic research, the key techniques explored through SERS-label and label-free-SERS nanoparticles that has been widely implemented for ultrasensitive detection of a wide range of cancer biomarkers and aims to develop non-invasive-screening-modality-of-multiple-cancer subtypes by incorporating Artificial Intelligence (AI) platform for clinical translation.
In another area, Dr. Maiti is working in medicinal chemistry with a major focus on semi-synthetic modification of phytomolecules as a therapeutic lead. Aiming to generate advanced HITs towards anti-cancer profiling the group is working to generate a library of compounds through in vitro cell-based screening in order to generate Advanced HITs for the next level of pre-clinical and clinical studies.