Dr. Mumtaz Naiyer, Postdoctoral Scientist, Clinical and Experimental Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, University of Southampton, United Kingdom was in city on Monday to deliver an invited lecture at Central University of Bihar. Dr. Jawaid Ahsan, Asst. Professor Centre for Biological Sciences (CBS) and coordinator of weekly seminar series introduced the guest to faculty members and students from the departments of Biotechnology, Life Sciences and Bioinformatics along with staffs of the university in the Conference hall of the university.
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| Dr. Mumtaz Naiyer |
In his talk on the topic, “NK Cell Signaling: Inhibition, Antagonism and Peptide Mediated NK cell activation”, Dr. Naiyer highlighted the role of Natural Killer (NK) cells and its significance for the Human body. Elaborating about the NK cells and its significance he said Natural killer cells (NKs) are important part of the body’s defence system expressing both activating as well as inhibitory molecules on their surface that enable the immune system to fight against viral infections such as HIV and Hepatitis C as well as cancer.
Referring to presently available therapies targeting NKs, the Bihar born scientist hailing from Kishanganj district said the scientists have used either cytokines, which have a number of systemic side effects thus limiting their use, or cellular therapies which are extremely expensive. Referring to his current work he said our focus is towards identifying a new drug. However, previous studies on peptide antagonism highlighted the role of peptides VAPWNSFAL (FA) and VAPWNSAL (DA) in this new mechanism of NK activation. He is currently working on identifying peptides that can be used as therapeutics and they have succeeded in identifying one.
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| Dr Mumtaz Naiyer |
This is the first example of a peptide that specifically engages an activating KIR receptor but not an inhibitory one, using this peptide and it’s derivatives we can activate NK cells in vivo as novel strategies for cancer immunotherapy as well as infectious diseases like Hepatitis C. Expressing his pleasure Dr. Rizwanul Haque, Head CBS thanked Dr. Naiyer for managing time to deliver the invited lecture at CUB despite his busy schedule. He said the talk of Dr. Naiyer was quite pertinent is today’s context especially in India including city of Patna where cases of Hepatitis C are increasing at an alarming rate. The work of Dr. Naiyer based on NK cell is going to be very helpful in the scientific fraternity and the remedies of the people affected by the killer diseases.
