Dr. Chapagai is a Postdoctroal Research Fellow in the Center For Cancer Research at Massachusetts General Hospital, and Harvard Medical School. His works involve 1) therapeutic development for blood cancers such as lymphoma, leukemia and multiple myeloma and 2) elucidating the mechanism of drug resistance. Dr. Chapagai received his MS degree from East Tennessee State University (ETSU). His research interest includes cancer cell signaling, CRISPR genetic editing and drug design and molecular pharmacology. In his Master dissertation at ETSU, he characterized a putative lipid transfer protein involved in defense signaling. In his doctoral dissertation research at Drug Discovery and Biomedical Sciences, University of South Carolina (USC), he worked on development and mechanistic study of novel inhibitors of the Polo Like Kinase 1 (PLK1) Polo Box Domain (PBD) for prostate cancer therapy. PLK1 inhibitors targeting catalytic domain have advanced to clinical trials but not demonstrated convincing efficacy. Targeting the PBD of PLK1 offers an attractive alternative to pursue PLK1 inhibition. His dissertation presented small molecule inhibitors targeting the PBD of PLK1 and non-ATP competitive are a potentially compelling alternative to catalytic-based inhibitors with novel mechanism of actions and drug-like properties.

1.    Danda Chapagai,Guru Ramamoorthy, Sandra Craig, Merissa Baxter, Elmar Nurmemmedov, Campbell McInnes and Michael D. Wyatt, “Non-Peptidic inhibitors of the PLK1 Polo Box Domain block TCTP phosphorylation, induce its degradation and target resistant cells� Journal of Medicinal Chemistry. 2021 64(14):9916-9925. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34210138/

2.     Sandra Craig, Merissa Baxter, Danda Chapagai, Elmar Nurmemmedov, Diego Altomare, Michael D. Wyatt, Campbell McInnes, “Structure-activityand mechanistic studies of non-peptidic inhibitors of the PLK1 polo box domain identified through REPLACE�. European Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, 2022, 227:113926. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34735919/

3.     Merissa Baxter, Danda Chapagai, Sandra Craig,Cecilia Hurtado, Jessy Varghese, Elmar Nurmemmedov, Michael D Wyatt, Campbell McInnes, “Peptidomimetic Polo-Box targeted inhibitors that engage PLK1 in tumor cells and are selective against the PLK3 tumor suppressor� ChemMedChem2020,15 (12), 1058–1066. https://doi.org/10.1002/cmdc.202000137

4.     Kumar,Dhirendra, Imdadul Haq, Danda Chapagai, Diwaker Tripathi, David Donald, Mir Hossain, and Shivakumar Devaiah. The Formation,Structure and Activity of Phytochemicals. Recent Advances in Phytochemistry,vol 45. Springer, New York, NY. 2015. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20397-3_5

5.    Kumar,Dhirendra, Danda Chapagai, Phillip Dean,and Mackenzie Davenport. Biotic and Abiotic Stress Signaling Mediated bySalicylic Acid. In: Pandey G. (eds) Elucidation of Abiotic Stress Signaling in Plants. Springer,New York, NY.2015 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-2211-6_12

6.    Danda Chapagai, Campbell McInnes and Michael D. Wyatt,"Structural basis for variations in Polo Like Kinase 1 conformation and intracellular stability induced by ATP competitive and novel non-competitive abbapolin inhibitors” (Under Review, ACS Chemical Biology).

7. Danda Chapagai, Jessy Varghese, Guru Ramamoorthy, Merissa Baxter, Elmar Nurmemmedov, Campbell McInnes and Michael D. Wyatt, “Novel small molecule inhibitor targeting the PBD of PLK1 for the prostate cancer therapy” (In Preparation).

8. Danda Chapagai, Timothy Audam, Dhirendra Kumar, SBIP-470 in plant defense and vegetative growth (In preparation)