Biotechnology

Dr. Akala is Professor of Pharmaceutics, Chair, Howard University Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee d Development (IACUC) and Director, Laboratory for Nanomedicine, Drug Delivery, and Pharmaceutical & Biopharmaceutical Drug Products Design and Development. Dr. Emmanuel O. Akala received his B. Pharm. and M.Sc.(Pharmaceutics) from The University of Ife (now OAU) Nigeria and Ph.D. (Pharmaceutics) from The University of Manchester, England. He was a DAAD Research Scientist in Biopharmaceutics and Pharmaceutical Technology at The University of Munster, Germany, NIH-Fogarty International Fellow in Pharmaceutics and Bioengineering at The University of Utah (USA). He is a registered and immunization Pharmacist in Utah, Maryland and Washington DC.

Dr. Akala’s research interest is in novel and conventional drug products’ design and development. Current research efforts focus on Nanotechnological Platforms for the Delivery of Bioactive (Drugs) and Diagnostic Agents.

Prof. Mire Zloh graduated in Physical Chemistry from the University of Belgrade (Yugoslavia) in 1987. He was then awarded an MSc in Physical Chemistry from the same university in 1992. His research in structural biology resulted in a PhD in Chemistry from the University of London in 1998 with a thesis entitled "Conformational Studies of the High Affinity IgE Receptor Peptides and Domains by NMR and Molecular Modelling". He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistryand he is a member of Academy of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Molecular Graphics and Modelling Society, Serbian Chemical Society and Society of Physical Chemists of Serbia. Prof. Zloh was serving as a membership secretary for the now defunct RSC Molecular Modelling interest group.Mire Zloh is Emeritus Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Hertfordshire. He was the Head of Pharmaceutical Chemistry in the Department of Pharmacy from January 2013 and Research Professor within the Centre for Health Services and Clinical Research from September 2015 until September 2017. Prior to his present position was Senior Lecturer at the UCL School of Pharmacy and was responsible for the integrated structural chemistry service that provides NMR, MS and CHN analysis to internal and external users. He was an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Pharmacy in Belgrade for the Clinical Chemistry Instrumentation course before moving to London. From 2002 to 2003, he was a tutor counsellor for the Open University. Prof. Zloh was Deputy Director on the MSc Course in Drug Discovery at UCL School of Pharmacy.

Basic Life Sciences

Dr. Xu is a Full Professor in Beijing Normal University-Hong Kong Baptist University United International College (UIC), Zhuhai Scholar Distinguished Professor, Associate Director of UIC Key Lab -Laboratory for Health Promotion Mechanism of Medicinal Food and Folk Remedy, author of 120 peer-reviewed papers. Dr. Xu received Ph.D in Chungnam National University, South Korea. He conducted postdoctoral research work in North Dakota State University, Purdue University, and Gerald P. Murphy Cancer Foundation during 2005-2009. Dr. Xu is serving as Associate Editor-in-Chief of Food Science and Human Wellness, an Editorial Board member of several international journals. He received inaugural President’s Award for Research of UIC in 2016.

The overall goal of his research is to understand health promoting effects of phytochemicals. Specific interests include: 1) Complex relationship among diet, gut microbiota, and human health, 2) health benefits (targeted at aging, cancers, obesity, and diabetes) assessment of phytochemicals from natural products; 3) cellular and molecular mechanisms of bioactive components in disease prevention.

Dr. Weinshilboum received B.A. and M.D. degrees from the University of Kansas, followed by residency training in Internal Medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital, a Harvard Hospital, in Boston. He was also a Pharmacology Research Associate at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the laboratory of Nobel Laureate Dr. Julius Axelrod. He is presently Professor of Pharmacology and Medicine at the Mayo Clinic Medical School. He also Co-Directs the Pharmacogenomics Program of the Mayo Center for Individualized Medicine.

Dr. Weinshilboum’s research has focused on pharmacogenomics, with over 470 published manuscripts on that topic. In recent decades he has applied genome-wide genomics and other “omics” techniques to study drug response—for example, the drug therapy of depression. Dr. Weinshilboum has been the recipient of many awards including an Established Investigatorship of the American Heart Association, a Burroughs Wellcome Scholar Award in Clinical Pharmacology, the Oscar B. Hunter Award of the American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics, the ASPET Harry Gold Award, the Edvard Poulsson Award from the Norwegian Pharmacology Society and an honorary Doctor of Science degree from the University of Kansas. Dr. Weinshilboum has served as a member of the Advisory Councils for two US NIH Institutes, the National Institute for General Medical Sciences (NIGMS)—the NIH Institute where Pharmacology is based--and the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI)—the NIH Institute that sponsored the Human Genome Project.

Dr. Bimal Roy Krishna is currently Professor and Director of Pharmacology at the College of Osteopathic Medicine, Touro University in Nevada. He obtained a Bachelor of Science (First Class Honors) in Pharmacology and Physiology and a Doctor of Philosophy, Medicine (OB/GYN/Pharmacology) from Monash University in Australia. Dr. Krishna also teaches for the Step 1 USMLE and COMLEX reviews for Kaplan Medical throughout the United States and in UAE, Europe, Saudi Arabia, India, Mexico and the Caribbean. He has been teaching online for Kaplan University for over 7 years. He has contributed to numerous publications and is a member of a number of organizations including Fellow-American College of Clinical Pharmacology.

His research background is in maternal and neonatal pharmacology specifically looking at materno-fetal transfer utilizing the perfused human placental and cultured syncytiotrophoblast model. Complementary and Alternative medicine is another area of interest.

Ke-He Ruan is Professor of Medicinal Chemistry & Pharmacology and he is Director for Center for Experimental Therapeutics and Pharmacoinformatics (CETP)

Signaling Molecules and Drugs, Drug targets, Molecular Mechanisms, Biomedical field

Professor Dr. Heyam Saad Ali, She used to work as a head of pharmaceutics department in Dubai Pharmacy College, UAE. Currently, she is working in University of Khartoum, Faculty of Pharmacy, Pharmaceutics Department, Prof. contributed more than 70 articles to reputed international scientific journals and invited as speaker in many conferences. The subjects of interest include: different types of conventional, controlled and targeted drug delivery systems in nanotechnology, pharmaceutical product development, Quality control, Quality assurance and GMP in pharmaceutical industry. She has been invited as speaker to numerous International conferences. In, addition of being Editor, Reviewer and member of editorial board of many international journals

RR

Dr. Anka G. Ehrhardt is a biophysicist with a doctorate degree in human physiology. She is currently working in the United States building and directing a team applying the latest technologies in support of the development of new live saving drugs.

Velvet Revolution in Biomarkers, Science and Business Drivers in Clinical Biomarkers

Professor Jun O. Liu received his B.S. degree in Chemistry from Nanjing University. He went to the US through the Chemistry Graduate Program, obtaining his MS in organic chemistry from the Ohio State University and his PhD in biochemistry from MIT. He did his postdoc at Harvard University and served as a research associate at the NIH. He served as an assistant and associate professor of chemistry and biology at MIT Center for Cancer Research before moving to his current position as a professor of pharmacology and oncology at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. His main research interest lies in the interface between chemistry, biology and medicine. In particular, his group has been focusing on the use of natural products and existing drugs as molecular probes of various cellular processes and as novel drug leads.

Our primary research interest lies at the interface between chemistry, biology and medicine. We employ high-throughput screening to identify modulators of various cellular processes and pathways that have been implicated in human diseases from cancer to autoimmune diseases. Once biologically active compounds are identified, they will serve as both probes of the biological processes of interest and leads for the development of new drugs for treating human diseases. Among the biological processes of interest are cancer cell growth and mestastasis, apoptosis, angiogenesis, calcium-dependent signaling pathways, eukaryotic transcription and translation. Some of the ongoing projects are highlighted herein.

B.Sc. (University of Calgary) Ph.D. (University of Alberta) Assoc. Prof. and Director, Metabolic Res. Lab., Dept. Biomedical Physiology, BPK-9625

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