Sayantan Sinha
Name: Sayantan Sinha
Qualification: M.Tech
Designation : Ph.D (SRF) student
Department: Centre for the Environment
Institute name : Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati
College address : Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, North Guwahati, Assam-781039
Award for : Research Excellence Award
Publication title: Journal
Paper Title : Stabilization of an Abasic Site Paired Against an Unnatural Triazolyl Nitrobenzene Nucleoside
Journal Name : Biophysical Chemistry
Volume : 264
Issue No. : September 2020
Month of publication : July
Year : 2020
Page no. : 106428
ISSN : 0301-4622
About Sayantan Sinha
Sayantan Sinha is pursuing his doctoral study (Ph.D final year) in chemical biology and environmental chemistry under the supervision of renowned scientist Prof. Dr. Subhendu Sekhar Bag FRSC, from Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati. He has completed his M.Tech (Environmental Nanotechnology) in 2015 from KIIT University. Prior to joining Ph.D at IIT Guwahati, Sayantan served at ICAR-IIWM as a senior research fellow and also before that he carried out the responsibilities of teaching assistant at KIIT University. Sayantan has nearly six years of experience in research and has published over 14 research articles in reputed international journals. He is
also part of two patents. He has received various awards of which, KIIT University medal for his exemplary achievement in research and academics and SERB-Young Scientist Travel Grant award are the most significant. Recently his contribution/research towards COVID-19 was also highlighted and featured in local and national news/media.
Research Scope:
My research basically is of multidisciplinary nature, focusing at the interface of chemistry and biology. I approach various problems which are threatening mankind and ecosystem and try to provide solutions with a scientific bent of
mind.
Presently I am working towards:
(i) Green Chemistry: Development of environmental friendly, efficient and cheap catalytic process for synthesis of value added medicinal compounds. Exorbitant price of various essential and life saving drugs are basically due to the costly process involved in synthesis. These processes are also not environmental friendly as they do not use green solvents. Another problem is that the catalysts that are often used in synthesis cannot be recycled or reused. Through my research I am trying to develop synthetic methodologies involving name reactions (such as triazolyl click chemistry, glasser couplings, shonogashira reactions etc) which will generate minimum
environmental concern and at the same time the catalyst used in production of value added chemicals can be reused without compromising the yield of the desired product. Hence our process will be a game changer in near future.
(ii) Chemical Biology: Development of unnatural nucleoside based molecules for detection and stabilization of an abasic DNA mutation/lesion. Thereby the research is focused to use the synthesized molecules as therapeutics for base excision repair deficient cancers.
(iii) Chemical/Biological Sensors: Development of smart nanomaterials and peptidomimetic fluorescent molecules for rapid detection of environmental poisons/pollutants. As part of this project we have developed a “Sense and Shoot” strategy for rapid detection and photocatalytic degradation of carcinogenic
dyes in wastewater.
(iv) Wastewater Treatment: Development of cheap solar photocatalytic process for removal and disinfection of antibiotics residues and pathogens from wastewater. As a part of this project I have developed various photoctalytic systems that have shown efficacy in removal of pathogens like MDR E.coli and V.cholerae from wastewater.
COVID-19 Research:
Looking at the present global scenario under the guidance of my supervisor I have initiated COVID-19 research. We are working towards COVID-19 drug designing. We have performed in-silico studies with our few synthesized and proposed drug candidates against the viral polymerase and proteases. As a continuation of our drug discovery research we have also proposed a Biogenic fluorescent nanomedicine that can act as a decoy and stop the attachment of SARS-CoV-2 to hACE2 host cell receptor protein. Detailed information related to our research on COVID-19 can
be obtained by visiting the web link https://www.iitg.ac.in/ssbag75/research_works_COVID-19.htm