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Dr Anwar Alam

Dr Anwar Alam

Assistant Professor, Life Science

anwar.alam@sharda.ac.in

About

Dr Anwar Alam completed his Ph.D from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He has more than 10 years of experience in research and 4 years in academic teaching. His area of specialization is Nanoparticle based drug-targeting and Infectious biology. He was awarded the DBT- research Associateship for pursing research on Nanoparticle based delivery of drugs at IIT-Delhi. He worked as project Scientist at the ICMR-National Institute of Pathology (ICMR-NIP) and Department of Biochemical Engineering & Biotechnology, IIT-Delhi. He was awarded the “COVID warrior” for his services during COVID-19 as a member of ICMR-NIP core team for COVID-19 management, where he played key role in establishing central depot for disbursement for COVID-19 kits across India, established labs for sample testing and kit validation. He has been the team member in projects funded by DBT, DST and ICMR; and successfully completed four projects. The main thrust of research in these projects were to explore the epidemiology and multi-drug resistance of Tuberculosis using Next-generation Sequencing, develop new chemical entities including drug-repurposing and host directed therapies for Tuberculosis (TB). He is part of team that has developed a first-in class drug to target latent TB bacilli. Further testing of this drug for safety and dosing are underway. He is currently leading a team of researchers including post-doc Scientists in three extramural projects on Development of Biomarker for screening TB, AI ML based prediction of multi-drug resistance and testing of a low-cost field deployable tool for TB detection. Patents related to medicaments for treatment of infections caused by biofilm forming pathogens have been granted. His research group deciphered novel mutations causing Bedaquiline resistance in M.tb strains among patients in TB-hotspot regions of India. The research team has engineered recombinant multi-epitope vaccine expressing M.tb-exclusive immunodominant antigens. Preclinical study has shown that this vaccine elicits sustained T and B cell memory response as compared to conventional BCG vaccine.

Dr Anwar has been conferred with Young Scientist award by the Microwave Applications Society of India. He has been the guest lecturer at Jamia Millia University and has delivered invited lectures in premier institutes including Aligarh Muslim Institute, South Asian University, Jamia Hamdard, Delhi Technological University and AIIMS-New Delhi. He has been nominated to attend the conferences on “Infectious Biology: Biology of intervention strategies”, organized by the Third World Academy of Sciences (TWAS). He was invited by ICMR-COVID team to attend workshop organized by ICMR & FICCI for “Health technology accelerated commercialization program (H:TAC)”, and nominated to attend Symposium on “Bench to Bedside-New Chemical Entity Development”, organized by ICMR in collaboration with Cipla. He is the Life Member of Indian Immunology Society, Indian Society of Cell Biologist, Indian Association of Cancer Research and member of the Editorial Board of the Frontiers Journal.

Experience
  • 10 years of Research experience and 4 years of academic experience
Qualification
  • PhD
Award & Recognition

Total Rewards -  10

  • Awarded COVID-Warrior from ICMR-National Institute of Pathology for services during COVID-19 from March 2020 to March 2021
  • Awarded Department of Biotechnology Research Associateship 2016-2018.
  • Young Scientist Award by Microwave Applications Society of India (MASI) 2011.
  • Awarded Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) Senior Research Fellowship 2010 and Junior Research Fellowship 2008.
  • Life Member-Indian Immunology Society, Indian Society of Cell Biologist, Indian Association of Cancer Research
  • Editorial Board- Frontiers Journal

Research

Total Research -  Research Publications: 26; Patents: 7; Book Chapters: 5

  • Zarin S, Shariq M, Rastogi N, Ahuja Y, Manjunath P, Alam A, Hasnain SE, Ehtesham NZ. Rv2231c, a unique histidinol phosphate aminotransferase from Mycobacterium tuberculosis, supports virulence by inhibiting host-directed defense. Cell Mol Life Sci. 2024;81(1):203.
  • Arora SK, Alam A, Naqvi N, Ahmad J, Sheikh JA, Rahman SA, Hasnain SE, Ehtesham NZ. Immunodominant Mycobacterium tuberculosis Protein Rv1507A Elicits Th1 Response and Modulates Host Macrophage Effector Functions. Front Immunol. 2020 Jul 21;11:1199.
  • Kumar A, Alam A*, Grover S, Pandey S, Tripathi D, Kumari M, Rani M, Singh A, Akhter Y, Ehtesham NZ, Hasnain SE. Peptidyl-prolyl isomerase-B is involved in Mycobacterium tuberculosis biofilm formation and a generic target for drug repurposing-based intervention. NPJ Biofilms Microbiomes. 2019 Jan 15;5(1):3. (*Equal First Author)
  • Kumar A, Alam A*, Rani M, Ehtesham NZ, Hasnain SE. Biofilms: Survival and defense strategy for pathogens. Int J Med Microbiol. 2017;307(8):481-489. (*Equal First Author)
  • Alam A, Sachar S, Puri N, Saxena RK. Interactions of polydispersed single-walled carbon nanotubes with T cells resulting in downregulation of allogeneic CTL responses in vitro and in vivo. Nanotoxicology. 2013;7(8):1351-60.

Certifications

Total Certification –  3

  • Certification in handling Biosafety Level 3 pathogen 
  • Multicolour Flow Cytometry (BD Biosciences)
  • Confocal Microscopy (Nikon)
     

Area of Interest

  • Infectious Disease Biology, 
  • Drug Development
  • Medical Devices anti-biofilm