CUTTING-EDGE
CURE

AUC’s biotechnology
graduate students
are researching
medications for
viral infections and
genetic diseases
in Egypt

    Wearing a white coat and sterile gloves,Ahmed Shibl,  biotechnology graduate student, sat in the biology  department’s laboratory preparing samples of bacteria  for DNA amplification with the lab’s new thermal cycler  machine. His hand was steady, his gaze intensely  focusing on dropping correct amounts of the mixture  into tubes.

     Shibl is one of 52 students enrolled in AUC’s  biotechnology graduate program, which started in Fall  2007. Students and faculty members are working on an  array of projects, including developing treatment options  for hepatitis C and other illnesses that include cancer,  genetic diseases and influenza.The program is taking an  innovative approach by focusing its research on the  distinctive needs of people in Egypt and the Middle  East.

Siam and biotechnology graduate students Ghada Mostafa and Ahmed Shibl discuss cloning results in the biology department laboratory

    From the Lab to the Real World

    Utilizing the university’s  high-tech facilities, particularly the Yousef Jameel  Science and Technology Research Center,AUC’s  biotechnology researchers are finding real-world applications for their projects, enabling them to address crucial issues in the fields of pharmaceutics, diagnostics, agriculture and the environment. One such project was conducted by Shibl and Rania Siam, associate professor of biology and director of AUC’s biotechnology graduate program, who both lived and worked in the Red Sea for two weeks on the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute scientific research vessel, Oceanus.The AUC researchers, working as part of a larger international collaborative research expedition, aimed to identify bacteria with potential anti-microbial properties that live in brine pools 2,300 meters beneath the water’s surface with temperatures up to 70 degrees Celsius. This is part of a drug discovery project for the identification of new compounds with potential biotechnological applications.

    “The environmental genomic project of the Red Sea is one of the few research projects in the region that will have an environmental, biological, biotechnology and pharmaceutical impact,” explained Siam.“It exposes our students to contemporary science and technologies and allows them to utilize cutting-edge experimental and analytical tools in several interdisciplinary fields such as marine biotechnology, genomics and bioinformatics.”

   For Shibl, the experience provided a unique learning opportunity.“It was very educational for me because there is no other way I would have dealt with such sophisticated sampling and filtering equipment except through this project,” he said.“I also met scientists from different countries and was exposed to new types of experiments.”

Shibl and Siam on board the research vessel Oceanus (owned by the National Science Foundation and operated by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute), as part of the scientific crew on the Red Sea genomics AUC-KAUST collaborative research project

Fighting the Virus

    With hepatitis C, faculty members and students are working to develop ultra-sensitive, low-cost testing for the disease and are using the latest research in genomics and bioinformatics to understand how the virus mutates.They are also working on treatment options, trying to identify how to target the delivery of hepatitis C medicine
straight to the liver.“There has been a lot of work done in genomics, but most of it deals with strains
of the disease and genotypes that we don’t see in Egypt,” said Hassan Azzazy, chair of the chemistry department.

   Other work includes research into genetic predisposition to infection and cancer, and mapping the genome of influenza to develop a long-term vaccine instead of the current yearly injection.“The flu virus mutates every year,” explained Siam.“We have identified conserved [non-mutated] regions in the virus and are now targeting those regions of influenza with a revolutionary drug that can eliminate not just avian, but swine and seasonal influenza as well.”

   Students are also working directly with international specialists at the U.S. Naval Medical Research Unit-3 on infectious diseases.They are involved in sequencing the genome of avian and swine influenza strains in Egypt. Other students are researching diarrheal pandemics caused by bacteria such as vibrio cholerae, which kills children due to dehydration.

   “These studies have inherent value for the country,” explained Siam.“The majority of vaccines currently administered are designed in Europe or North America against the bacterial strains in these regions.Therefore, assessing the predominant bacterial strains contributing to diseases in Egypt will allow the design of effective vaccines and appropriate treatment strategies that will decrease the regional disease burden.”