Dr. Lakkaniga has extensive experience in the field of drug discovery. His research is in the interface of synthetic chemistry, biology and computational methods in drug discovery. During his doctoral studies, Dr. Lakkaniga worked on several oncology projects targeting various kinases particularly FLT3, Aurora B, RET and TRK-A. During this time he discovered the first non-ATP competitive Aurora Kinase B inhibitor, SP-96. This compound also shows potent growth inhibition of triple negative breast cancer cells. Dr. Lakkaniga also discovered novel chemotypes with potent inhibition of wild-type and clinically relevant mutations of RET and FLT3, and the non-canonical pathway of NFkB for multiple myeloma. During his time at Scripps Research under Prof. Ian Wilson,  Dr. Lakkaniga  worked on inhibiting hemagglutinin, a key surface protein on influenza viruses. 

Dr. Lakkaniga established his independent research lab at IIT Dhanbad, where students get opportunity to learn heterocyclic organic synthesis, design potential inhibitors for various protein targets, apply computational methods to explore protein conformational space, and evaulate the synthesized compounds for biological activity through enzymatic and cellular assays.