Kanaga Sabapathy's Biography

Kanaga Sabapathy, Professor and Head, National Cancer Centre

Kanaga Sabapathy obtained his B.Sc (Hons) degree in Zoology from the National University of Singapore (NUS), and then his Ph.D. in Molecular & Cellular Immunology from the Institute for Molecular & Cellular Biology (IMCB), Singapore, in 1995. His post-doctoral work was conducted at the Institute of Molecular Pathology in Vienna with Dr Erwin Wagner, studying the c-Jun-N-terminal kinase stress signaling pathway, using genetically-engineered mice. He moved to the National Cancer Centre Singapore (NCCS) in late 1999 as the Principal Investigator of the Laboratory of Molecular Carcinogenesis, and since 2013, is the overall Head of the Division of Cellular & Molecular Research. He is also the Research Director of the Academic Clinical Program in Oncology at SingHealth-Duke-NUS. Dr Sabapathy is a Professor with the Cancer and Stem Cell Biology Program at Duke-NUS; a joint Professor with the Department of Biochemistry at NUS and a joint Research Director at the IMCB. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists (UK), and was recently awarded the inaugural National Research Foundation Investigatorship award (Class of 2015) in recognition of his work, to further his investigations on ground-breaking, high-risk research. He has recently been appointed as the Director of Planning and Strategy at the NCCS, to coordinate and oversee all brand planning, strategic planning and analytical activities in the upcoming new NCCS.
Dr Sabapathy’s group focuses on investigating the molecular mechanisms involved in cancer development and response to therapy, through the study of the p53 and p73 tumor suppressor paradigms. In addition, his laboratory is involved in generating mouse models to study hepatocellular carcinoma and liposarcomas, amongst others, aimed at both understanding the molecular nature of cancer and designing effective targeted-therapies against the disease.