Dr. Desai obtained her Bachelor of Science and Master of Science in Biochemistry from University of Bombay in 1981 and 1983 respectively.  She received her Doctorate in Biochemistry from the University of Bombay in 1991. From 1991 to 1996, Dr. Desai did a post-doctoral fellowship at the UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Jersey. Since 1996, she was a faculty member in the Department of Pharmacology at the UMDNJ/RWJMS.  During her tenure there she made a novel finding that ISG15 (a UBL) is overexpressed in many tumor cells and its overexpression interferes with protein polyubiquitination and degradation.  She also worked on the repair of topoisomerase I (TOP1)-mediated DNA damage.  She showed that one of the repair mechanisms for TOP1-DNA covalent complexes is through the activation of the ubiquitin/26S proteasome pathway.  This novel repair mechanism is quite significant and may have implications in the resistance mechanism to the clinically used TOP1-directed anticancer drugs (e.g. Toptecan). In 2007, Dr. Desai joined the LSUHSC as Assistant Professor in the Department of Biochemistry &Molecular Biology.

• The roles of ubiquitin and ubiquitin-like proteins in cancer.
• Mechanism of tumor cell death and drug resistance.
• The roles of ubiquitin and ubiquitin-like protein ISG15 in neurodegenerative diseases.