Puja received her bachelor’s and master’s degree in Microbiology from the University of Calcutta, India. She completed her PhD under the supervision of Professor Jyotirmayee Dash at Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (IACS), India. Her research in India is focused on investigating the structure-function relationship of nucleic acid targeting small molecules for cancer therapeutics and development of target guided synthetic approaches for the discovery of drug like candidates for G-quadruplex and i-motif DNA secondary structures.
Puja was awarded Royal Society Newton International postdoctoral fellowship to pursue her postdoctoral research in the group of Professor Jason Micklefield at the University of Manchester, United Kingdom. Puja joined the Micklefield group in January 2021. Her current research is centred on development of a synthetic biology approach for the facile total biosynthesis of semi-synthetic antibiotics.
Selected Publications:
(1) P. Saha, D. Panda, D. Müller, A. Maity, H. Schwalbe, J. Dash. In situ Formation of Transcriptional Modulators by Non-canonical DNA i-Motifs. Chem. Sci. 2020, 11, 2058.
(2) D. Panda, P. Saha, T. Das, J. Dash, Target guided synthesis using DNA nano-templates for selectively assembling a G-quadruplex binding c-MYC inhibitor. Nat. Commun. 2017, 8, 16103. (Highlighted in Nature INDIA and in The Hindu).
(3) P. Saha, D. Panda, J. Dash, The application of click chemistry for targeting quadruplex nucleic acids. Chem. Commun. 2019, 55, 731.