GMU Master’s Students Shine in the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2022 – New Orleans

In April, 8-13, 2022, and after two years of being conducted online, the American Association of Cancer Research (AACR) organized its 115^th annual meeting in Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, New Orleans, LA, USA. Several thousands of cancer research interested scientists attended and presented in the biggest cancer research conference Worldwide.

Two Master of Drug Discovery and Development students, Dalia Al-Saeedy and Reham Abuhejjleh participated in the Conference by presenting their research results in one of the poster sessions of this annual meeting. Dalia and Reham are from the first cohort of the MDD program in the College of Pharmacy, Gulf Medical University who are conducting their thesis research point in the field of onco-pharmacology under the supervision of Dr. Ahmed Al-Abd (Professor of Pharmacology, Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, College of Pharmacy, Gulf Medical University). Dalia’s presentation focused on modulating the polymorphic UGT-1A1 gene in colorectal cancer and how this will impact the efficacy/toxicity of topoisomerase inhibitor drugs. While Reham’s presentation showed the influence of a marine derived metabolite (terrein) on the intra-tumoral metabolism of gemcitabine. All presentations of AACR annual meeting will be published in the July-2022 issue of Cancer Research Journal (one of the top international cancer journals with impact factor of 12.7)

AACR is a premier USA based society concerned with basic, clinical and translational cancer research. The Society hosted a group of top impact factor ISI-journals, such as Cancer Discovery (IF: 39.4), Cancer Research (IF: 12.7), Clinical Cancer Research (IF: 12.531), Cancer Immunology Research (IF: 11.15), and many others

Dr. Al-Abd is very proud with his students’ scholar achievement and believe this step will stimulate other MDD students during their course of study.

Dean Sherief Khalifa commented: We are happy to see our MDD students along with their supervisors participating and presenting in top international conferences worldwide.