Dr. Anwar Azad P

Qualification M.Sc., Ph.D.
Designation Ramalingaswami Fellow
Immunology & Stem Cell Biology
Aravind Medical Research Foundation
e-mail id anwar.azad@aravind.org

Introduction

Dr. Anwar Azad P did his undergraduate (B.Sc., Microbiology) from University of Calicut(2005), and postgraduate (M.Sc., Biotechnology) from University of Kerala (2007). He earned his PhD from Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology (SCTIMST), Kerala (2013) for his research’s in the field of ‘stem cells and tissue engineering’. Later, he went to University of Edinburgh, UK for his postdoctoral studies (2014 – 2021), where he was working on ‘human pluripotent stem cell derived hepatic / renal organoids’. He Joined Aravind Medical Research Foundation as a Ramalingaswami Re-Entry Fellow in 2021.

Research & Publications

Dr. Anwar’s research interests include in vitro modelling of ocular diseases like ‘age related macular degeneration’ using human pluripotent stem cells, for better understanding the disease pathophysiology and to develop novel therapies.

Publications

  1. Palakkan AA, Raj DK, Rojan J, et al. Evaluation of polypropylene hollow-fiber prototype bioreactor for bioartificial liver. Tissue Eng Part A. 2013;19 (9-10):1056-1066. PMID: 23240809.
  2. Palakkan AA, Hay DC, Anil Kumar PR, Kumary TV, Ross JA. Liver tissue engineering and cell sources: issues and challenges. Liver Int.2013;33(5):666-76. PMID: 23490085.
  3. Liu J, Brzeszczynska J, Samuel K, Palakkan AA,et al. Efficient episomal reprogramming of blood mononuclear cells and differentiation to hepatocytes with functional drug metabolism. Exp Cell Res. 2015;338(2):203-213. PMID: 26256888.
  4. Palakkan AA, Drummond R, Anderson RA, et al. Polarisation and functional characterisation of hepatocytes derived from human embryonic and mesenchymal stem cells. Biomed Rep. 2015;3(5):626-636. PMID: 26405536.
  5. Palakkan AA, Nanda J, Ross JA. Pluripotent stem cells to hepatocytes, the journey so far. Biomed Rep. 2017;6(4):367-373. PMID: 28413633.
  6. Palakkan AA, R. Anil Kumar and T. V. Kumary. An in vitro fluorometric assay for evaluating functional polarity of hepatocyte. International Journal of Bioassays. 2014;3(1),1630-1636. ISSN: 2278-778X
  7. Saumi M, Prasad T, Venugopal B, Palakkan AA, et al. Standardizing transdifferentiation of rabbit bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells to corneal lineage by simulating corneo-limbal cues. J of stem cell research and medicine. 2017;2(2): 1-10. doi: 10.15761/JSCRM.1000119
  8. Sallam M, Palakkan AA, Mills CG, et al. Differentiation of a Contractile, Ureter-Like Tissue, from Embryonic Stem Cell-Derived Ureteric Bud and Ex Fetu Mesenchyme. J Am Soc Nephrol. 2020; 31(10):2253-2262.PMID: 32826325.
  9. Palakkan, A. A. Bioassays: a new package in R for analyzing cellular assays. Journal of Open Source Software. 2020; 5(54), 2402. https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.02402

Book Chapters

  1. Palakkan AA, Nanda Jyoti and James A. Ross. Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell-Derived Definitive Endoderm Bulk Culture and Hepatic Differentiation. Cell-Based Assays Using iPSCs for Drug Development and Testing, Methods inMolecular Biology, Springer Protocols, 2019;1994: 41-53. ISBN 978-1-4939-9477-9

Awards

  • Ramalingaswami Re-entry Fellowship by Department of Biotechnology (DBT), India, 2021-2026
  • Commonwealth split site PhD fellowship, 2011 – 2012.
  • Junior/ Senior Research Fellowship by Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR), 2008 – 2013.
  • National Eligibility Test – University Grant Commission, 2010.
  • 3rd Rank, MSc Biotechnology, University of Kerala, 2007.
  • CSIDtravel grant for paper presentation at GRCconference, USA, 2013.