Ejaz Ahmad, PhD

Dr. Ejaz Ahmad received his PhD from AMU under the supervision of Prof. Rizwan H. Khan, where his research focused on the biochemistry and biophysics of protein structure-function relationship. He investigated protein folding, misfolding, and aggregation, as well as protein-protein and protein-ligand interactions by using spectroscopy, calorimetry, and computational approaches. In 2019, Dr. Ahmad joined the Department of Pathology at the University of Michigan Medical School. Prior to joining the University of Michigan, Dr. Ahmad was a postdoctoral research associate with Prof. Song-Tao Liu at the University of Toledo, where he studied inter- and intramolecular interactions in the mitotic checkpoint and anaphase promoting complexes. His work provided insights into the mechanisms of chromosomal segregation regulation, with a special emphasis on aneuploidy in cancers.

Dr. Ahmad is interested in studying how proteins, enzymes, and protein-protein interactions affect cellular homeostasis by utilizing diverse molecular and cellular systems to identify potential therapeutic targets especially in pediatric cancers like neuroblastoma, sarcoma and leukemia. Therefore, his current focus is on the discovery of small molecules, peptides, and peptidomimetic inhibitors for the development of chemical tools and, ultimately, therapeutic agents targeting cell viability and differentiation by inhibiting enzymes and protein-protein interactions involved in apoptosis, mitosis, epigenetic regulation, DNA damage and other related pathways. The screened compounds (from virtual, fragment-based, and high-throughput screening) are optimized and characterized using various biochemical, biophysical, and biological approaches to develop novel cancer therapeutics.

Dr. Ahmad is also interested and has experience in clinical trials to determine remission rate in secondary acute myeloid leukemia patients by combining anti-apoptotic protein inhibitors with standard remission induction chemotherapy.