Sanghapal D. Sawant obtained his Ph.D. jointly from CSIR-Indian Institute of Integrative Medicine, Jammu and SRTM University, Nanded (India). In 2006, he started his independent research career as a scientist at CSIR-IIIM, Jammu.

His early research was focused in the area of cancer, skincare product development, anti-infectives, and immune adjuvants. During his postdoctoral research at Kyoto University, Japan, he worked on the synthesis and chemical biology of ligand directed fluorophore tagging of native PI3K protein in living cells for their molecular interaction studies. More specifically, his current research focus is on medicinal chemistry and target-based drug discovery for cancer by inhibiting PI3K/AKT/mTOR axis and development of PDE inhibitors for ED and pulmonary disorders. In infectious diseases, his research group focusses on tuberculosis and gram-negative bacterial infections. His ongoing work on rare diseases like sickle cell anaemia includes multipronged approaches for pain management and other disease conditions that arise due to sickle cell crisis.

Alongside medicinal chemistry, his group is also interested in developing novel synthetic methodologies in catalytic and electrophilic organic transformations and their application in the total syntheses of bioactive natural products and in other areas.