Azhar Rasul
Government College University Faisalabad, Pakistan
Biography:
Dr. Azhar Rasul is an Assistant Professor at Faculty of Life Sciences, Government College University Faisalabad. He obtained PhD fellowship jointly awarded by Ministry of Education (MOE), Pakistan and China Scholarship Council (CSC), China and completed his Ph.D. in Cell Biology (Chemical Cancer Biology) from Northeast Normal University, China. He later received China postdoctoral fellowship in 2012, Japanese Society for Promotion of Science (JSPS) Postdoctoral fellowship in 2013, and subsequently Tokyo Biochemical Research Foundation (TBRF) fellowship in 2015. He has published over 45 peer-reviewed research articles with commulative imapct factor over 100 along with more than 1000 citations. He also has published two book chapters. He has received Young Scientist award by International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (IUBMB) for year 2018. He has presented several invited talks at National and International level. Three PhD and Eight MPhil students are currently working under his supervision. He has obtained several national and international research grants amounting > 20 Million PKRs. His lab is actively engaged in interdisciplinary research on novel tumor biomarkers, cancer-related health disparities, and identification of non-toxic anti-cancer compounds for various hallmarks of cancer (cancer stem cells, cancer cell metabolism, and tumor hypoxia) from
Abstract:
Abstract: In our pursuit of discovering novel simple small molecules that potently inhibit cancer cell growth, NPDepo library containing small molecules was screened. Here, we report a novel potent cytotoxic agent that displayed broad cytotoxic activity against panel of cell lines. In this study, target of small molecule was recognized by phenotypic profiling systems (MorphoBase and ChemProteoBase). These results were further validated by in vitro polymerization assays. Furthermore, small molecule inhibits the microtubule formation and induces G2/M phase cell cycle arrest, indicating that potential cytotoxic effects might be through tubulin polymerization inhibition. This novel scaffold can serve as templates for developing novel microtubule-targeted agents, overcoming the confines of existing microtubule-inhibiting drugs.