Research Publications - College of Medicine and Health Science

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Professor & Chair
Prof Basel al-Ramadi
Professor
Prof S Dissanayake
Prof T Pal
Prof T A Rizvi
Associate Professor
Dr G Khan
Assistant Professor
Dr A Al-Qahtani
Dr M Al-Shamsi
Dr A Sonnevend
Medical Research Specialist
Ms L M Ali
Ms A Al-Ghazawi
Mr A Al-Haj
Ms M Ibrahim
Ms P S Philip
Mr A Shahin
Medical Research Technician
Ms G Bashir
Medical Secretary
Ms M Dawood
Office Assistant
Mr H Mohammed
Department
of Microbiology
and Immunology
Research Profile
The research interests of members of the
Department of Medical Microbiology &
Immunology span from studies into the
molecular mechanism of bacterial and viral
pathogenesis to investigating the underlying
molecular and cellular mechanisms by which
the immune system functions in health and
diseases.
The Department is involved in teaching
undergraduate medical students as well
as graduate students in the MSc and PhD
programs. Currently, there are four PhD and
four MSc students in our program. Three more
MSc students graduated from the program in
2011.
Professor Basel al-Ramadi
The functional characterization of the innate immune system and
its role in disease has been the focus of research in our laboratory
for the past few years. Although this system was initially
thought to be simple in how its components function, the data
from many laboratories demonstrate quite the opposite. It turns
out that the innate immune system is at the center of many
hitherto unexplained phenomena. These include, for instance,
how adjuvants used in human vaccines actually work and why
diseases like type I diabetes is now thought of as a chronic inflammatory
condition. The innate immune system is at the heart
of the many sequelae of human obesity, now collectively known
as the metabolic syndrome. Work in our laboratory demonstrated
a direct role for the Toll-like receptor pathway in maintaining self
tolerance. This is the default pathway that prevents individuals
from reacting against their own tissue, thereby averting the
development of autoimmune diseases. Thus, animals deficient
in MyD88 protein, a central regulator of Toll-like receptor path-