Drug Discovery & Development in Bangladesh

Prof. Shamsun Nahar Khan, Ph.D.
Dhaka, Bangladesh

MOSAICQUE October 2013 edition, honors the first ever TWAS Chemistry award instituted in the honour of Dr. Atta-ur-Rahman, a leading scientist & scholar from Pakistan, ushered onto Young Women Scientist Dr. Shamsun Nahar Khan from Bangladesh.

Atta-ur-Rahman, from Pakistan, is a leading scientist and scholar in the field of organic chemistry, especially renowned for his research in areas relating to natural product chemistry. With over 850 publications, he is also credited with reviving higher education and research practices in Pakistan. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society (UK) in 2006 thereby becoming one of the only 4 scientists in the Muslim world to ever have earned this honor. He is Vice-President (Central & South Asia) of the TWAS Council, President of the Network of Academies of Sciences of Islamic Countries (NASIC) and Foreign Fellow of the Korean Academy of Sciences. Atta-ur-Rahman was the President of the Pakistan Academy of Sciences from 2003 to 2006, and was again elected President of the Pakistan Academy of Sciences in 2011.

Introduction:
In this October edition of MOSAICQUE Magazine, we are featuring an outstanding & blessed Young Women Scientist from Bangladesh – Dr. Shamsun Nahar Khan, the eldest daughter of Begum Hasmat Ara M.D. and Sahfique Khan. Her father is a well known activist from Bangladesh, profoundly involved with the development of the country by serving himself as an Executive Director and Senior Advisor of Gonoshahthaya Kendra (Peoples’ Health Center; Coordinator Dr. Zafrullah Chowdhury, is the winner of Alternative Nobel Prize”), and has played a prominent role in nation building, as a health care provider to a vast majority of population in Bangladesh particular with respect to global health care issues.

Dr. Shamsun Khan’s, Mother Dr. Hasmat Ara started her career as a medical doctor (Dhaka Medical College) and later on engaged herself as an academician to teach Pharmacology at the Bangladesh Medical College – one of the most renowned medical institute of the country. Dr. Khan has been brought up by her parents in an intellectually enlightened environment.

Shamsun, has spent indeed a great deal of her childhood time with her maternal grandparents Mohammad Harun Mallick and Mrs. Raisa Harun, – who served the Bengal Civil Service Cadre. Mrs. Raisa Harun has made an extensive contribution in the development of education system and economical status of woman in Bangladesh and has also been decorated with the prestigious Presidential award for her elaborate contributions to the social welfare to the woman deprived from social benefits in the country. Dr. Shamsun Khan has been influenced, groomed, embraced and encouraged by her grandmother from childhood towards nation building.

Regarding the research:
Dr. Khan’s started her drug discovery research during her undergraduate training in Dhaka, by conducting clinical trials studying various important indigenous medicinal plants and their bioactivity on chronic skin diseases. These diseases, according to Dr. Khan did not show any sensitivity or activity using conventional steroids, but observed fascinating bio-activity by using these medicinal plants. So she went ahead and isolated multi drug resistant clinical bacterium specimen from different clinical disease conditions and discovered that many of the plants extracts of these medicinal plants are highly bioactive on these bacterium specimens.

This led to Dr. Shamsun’s keen interest in the drug discovery and development, that started earlier in her research career. Till date, she has discovered more than 20 classes of new alpha-glucosidase inhibitors from both natural and synthetic sources. These are of interest, due to their therapeutic potential in the treatment of variety of disorders, such as diabetes, HIV infection, cancer, and lysosomal storage diseases. Results of this research are reflected in her thirty research publications, in peer-reviewed and reputed journals.

Due to the important clinical and industrial applications of her research, she has been awarded a total of 7 US patents and publications. She has also expanded her work to the enzyme stabilizers by characterizing Pulicarside-1; which helps to increase efficiency of the alpha-glucosidase by reducing the production cost of monosaccharide from disaccharides. She has elaborated her work to the method development of clinical / synthetic fungal transformation.

Dr. Khan has shown an extraordinary enthusiasm for both chemistry and biology since her doctorate studies, and carried out a variety of interdisciplinary investigations, including: anticancer studies; enzyme kinetics using chromatographic techniques; homology modelling; and pesticide & medicinal plant analysis etc. She eventually focused her efforts on the identification of enzymes associated with different clinical conditions and a kinetic study of enzyme inhibition.

One of Dr. Khan’s projects involved the identification of a complex structure of 7sk small nuclear RNA and HIV-1 (human immunodeficiency virus) Tat peptide through NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance). She has currently completed this project successfully with excellent findings. One of the findings includes introducing innovative research idea in the country specially to work in the interface of chemistry and biology. She is currently working in the field of pharmacology and enzymology along with phytochemical investigation of medicinal plants in Bangladesh.

Dr. Khan’s project was also involved in the identification of a complex structure of 7sk small nuclear RNA and HIV-1 (human immunodeficiency virus) Tat peptide through NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance). She has completed the project successfully with an excellent finding. She is introducing this innovative research idea in the country specially to work in the interface of chemistry and biology. She is working in the field of pharmacology and enzymology along with phytochemical investigation of medicinal plants in Bangladesh.

Dr. Khan is now working on developing novel alpha glucosidase inhibitors – alpha glucosidases are known to be the enzymes involved in carbohydrate metabolism. Their inhibitors interfere with the absorption of glucose in the gut, and could help to control the blood sugar level in type-2 diabetes. Dr. Khan has identified some major inhibitors within different families of natural compounds, such as terpenoids, flavonoids and iridoids, as well as within synthetic compounds such as biscoumarins, isocoumarins and chalcone derivatives.

Awards & Accolades:
Khan began her academic career in 1999 as a lecturer in the Department of Pharmacy and Clinical Pharmacology, at Gono Bishwabidyalaya (People’s University), in Dhaka, Bangladesh. In 2002, she was awarded a postgraduate fellowship to undertake research on a PhD by the Organization for Women in Science for the Developing World (OWSD), which is hosted by TWAS at its headquarters in Trieste. Khan completed her thesis at the H.E.J. Research Institute of Chemistry, International Centre for Chemical and Biological Sciences, at the University of Karachi, Pakistan, in 2008.
Shamsun Nahar Khan is the holder of 7 patents, and the recipient of several
awards, including the award of Merit Scholarship Programme for High Technology from the Islamic Development Bank in Saudi Arabia. She supervised some 20 students between 2008 and 2010, and has authored more than 30 papers in international peer-reviewed journals. For these contributions to her field, Khan was awarded the Atta-ur-Rahman Prize for chemistry.

Shamsun has had been invited for many international conferences and university for her talk including, most prestigious 42nd congress of IUPAC (International Union for Pure and Applied Chemistry) held in Glasgow, UK and University of Bath, UK in 2009.

She has had been awarded “TWOWS Postgraduate Fellowship” to start her Ph.D. due to her keen research interest. For her excellent performance as an academician, East West University awarded her “Excellence in Research and Teaching” award.

Publications:
One of her important contribution is as an author of a chapter of a book entitled “Bioassay Models for Antidiabetic Activity of Natural Products” published by United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), Trieste, Italy. This chapter is very often used as guidelines for the alpha-glucosidase inhibition and in-vivo pharmacological studies for diabetic and related research work by the researchers.

She actively participates to extending her contribution to the different international and national organization among them “RSC (Royal Society of Chemistry) UK, “Organization for Women in science for Developing World (OWSD)”, Italy and “Asian Network Research on Antidiabetic Plants” are noticeable.

Profile:
Dr. Shamsun Nahar Khan, Born in Dhaka, Bangladesh in 1974, Shamsun Nahar Khan received the first Atta-ur-Rahman Prize in chemistry in 2012, she has been also awarded TWAS-Bangladesh Young Scientist Award in 2011.

Dr. Khan has Bachelor and Master’s in Pharmacy, being a Professional she has chosen to develop her carrier as an academician and continued her research in academia. Dr. Khan has been recently completed her postdoctoral training program from the department of Molecular and Cellular Biology Department, Cambridge, MA, USA.

Shamsun is exceptionally resourceful; she has established well-equipped laboratories with HPLC (High pressure Liquid Chromatography, IR (Infrared Spectroscopy), GC (Gas Chromatography) to facilitate research work at her university.

During pursuing her Ph.D she showed her courage and volunteer as a coordinator of her research group at her host research institute for a significantly longer period of time. She was actively involved in organizing more than a dozen’s of international conferences and workshops. At this moment she is serving as an Associate Professor, Department of Pharmacy, East West University Currently Shamsun is guiding more than 10 research students at Masters and graduate levels. Shamsun is looking forward to have contemporary science education in Bangladesh.

Currently Shamsun is guiding more than 10 research students at Masters and graduate levels. Shamsun is looking forward to have contemporary science education in Bangladesh.

Prof. Shamsun Nahar Khan article on Drug Discovery and Development in Bangladesh