Kashmiri gets Ph.D in Sastra
Research to make drugs safer
By : n. arun kumar
Update: 2014-08-10 04:41 GMT
Chennai: A dream brought Shabir Ahmad Ganai all the way from Anantnag in Kashmir down some 3500 km south to Sastra University in Thanjavur. He was obsessed with desire to do research in epigenetic, study of changes in gene expression caused by certain base pairs in DNA, or RNA, being turned off and on through chemical reactions.
“My dream has been fulfilled. I can’t tell you how happy I am now”, said Shabir, speaking to DC Saturday on the sidelines of Sastra’s 28th annual convocation, where he received his Ph.D in nanotechnology.
The son of a driver, the handsome scholar is the first student from Kashmir to get Ph.D from Sastra University and probably one of the very few who had come down from the northern corner of the country seeking higher education. “I want to return to Kashmir to establish a laboratory for epigenetics in a university,” said Shabir, now 32.
“My study focused on minimizing the side-effects of drugs. I worked on the epigenetic roots of drugs and used the computational approach to do research”, he explained.
The research in probing the structural and functional roles of histone deacetylase inhibition on nuclear geometry, isoform specificity and epigenetic states was completed in five years and seven months.
Robust compliments have poured in from all sides for Shabir's work.
“His research will have huge impact on health care, particularly in treating cancer”, said Prof S. Vaidhyasubramanian, dean, Sastra University.
“The university is happy nurturing his interest in an emerging research field that could help millions of patients in the coming years”, he told DC.
“I applied to Sastra University and after clearing the entrance test, I got selected for research at the Centre for Nanotechnology and Biometrics in 2009. The University helped me with teaching assistant fellowship and also supported financially with project funding of '15,000 a month”, he said, recalling that in the course of his study, he could present five papers in international conferences, including those at the Cambridge University, European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL-Heidelberg) and the German Cancer Institute.