Research Profile - College of Medicine and Health Science - United ...

Department
of Pharmacology
Research Profile
Professor & Chair:
Prof G Petroianu
Professor:
Prof A Adem
Prof MY Hasan
Associate Professor:
Dr S Bastaki
Dr M Oz
Assistant Professor:
Dr S Attoub
Medical Research
Specialist:
Ms N Amir
Ms K Arafat
Mr SM Nurulain
Mr A Shamsllisam
Medical Secretary:
Ms S Duncan
Central Facilities
Medical Research
Specialist:
Dr M Kosanovic
Animal House
Veterinarian:
Dr M Al Sultan
Medical Research
Specialist:
Mr M El Wasila
Mr M Shafiullah
The Pharmacology Department has special
interests in Diabetes and Degenerative
Diseases, Neuroscience, Clinical Toxicology,
Gastroenterology and Oncology. The research is
done with state of the art equipment in purposebuilt
laboratories with good technical and other
support.
Prof. Abdu Adem
Diabetes
Mechanisms of Apoptotic Cell Death in Diabetes
In almost all multicellular organisms, cell suicide or apoptosis
appears to play an important role in the maintenance of cellular
homeostasis. Apoptosis is tightly regulated by a set of genes that
either promote apoptosis or promote cell survival. Although a
number of stimuli appear to trigger the process of apoptosis,
there are two major signaling pathways of apoptosis: the death
receptor pathway and the death receptor-independent or
mitochondrial pathway. Mechanisms of apoptotic cell death are
being studied in kidneys of an animal model of diabetes. The ultra
structural features in the tubules seem to implicate apoptosis in
the pathology of renal nephropathy. In addition we reported, for
the first time, a significant loss of foot processes of podocytes
(*) in the diabetic rat kidney (Fig.1 left). These findings could
contribute to the understanding of the patho-physiology of
diabetic nephropathy.
Neurodegenerative Diseases
Novel Selective Ligands for Muscarinic Acetylcholine
Receptors
Five muscarinic acetylcholine receptor subtypes (M1- M5) have
been cloned and are found in the brain. However, the
pharmacological identification of the subtypes responsible for
the various central effects of the muscarinic drugs is difficult due
to the lack of highly selective muscarinic agonists and
antagonists. We have isolated muscarinic M1 and M4 receptor