Salma Khan, PhD

I began my professional career as a Gynecologist in Bangladesh where woman prefers to consult with lady doctors only.  I have seen patients dying of cancers without treatment or lack of early diagnosis.  My journey began at that time to develop myself as a scientist who can explore the unsolved questions to cure cancer or to establish early diagnostic tools.  I then took the opportunity of Gov. of Japan’s scholarship for PhD degree in Gynecologic Pathology/Reproductive Physiology.  I have enjoyed every day of my life doing experiments and amazingly saw the research progress when Gleevac was marketed to save the life of Leukemia patients.  That’s the day, I decided to stay in cancer research field and discover some drugs to cure cancer or adjuvants to existing cancer therapy and encourage and educate my students to do so. â?¨â?¨

 

When I joined Loma Linda University, I have mastered myself in protein purification from a large scale culture Bio-reactor, Mass-spectrometric analysis, Flow-Cytometry (both cell cycle analysis by PI staining and cell-surface staining), exosome purification, confocal microscopy, siRNA, and Real-Time PCR.

 

While I was a post-doc researcher at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center since 2001 in a complex Pathology laboratory and research collaborative environment; providing molecular pathology support for a variety of projects in breast cancer, optimization and establishment of fluorescent in-situ hybridization (FISH) technique including synthesis of probe from BAC clone, labeling, and hybridizing into both metaphase spread and archival tissues, DNA purification from microdissected archival samples, Methylation specific PCR (MSP) to study epigenetic silencing of PTEN gene, primer optimization for LOH study primarily in breast, ovary, prostate cancer, and malignant melanoma.  My previous paper is on epigenetic titled ``PTEN promoter is methylated in a proportion of invasive breast cancers``, at International Journal of Cancer, 2005. â?¨â?¨

 

I am dedicated to establish myself as a Cancer Biologist.  As a Research Assistant Professor here in Loma Linda University, I have been successfully supervising MD/PhD students, Clinical fellows, and technicians in the research field.  As I emerged into a more national and international awareness of research informatics, I was particularly attracted to cancer biology.  It has thus far been an intense training in cancer biology field.  This training has endorsed my aspirations to keep me in more of a therapeutic approach.  Thus far, it has been re-tooling my scientific knowledge with the idioms, paradigms, and techniques of knowledge engineering and artificial knowledge in medicine.  This has led me to teach Cancer Biology course every spring series 2009 onwards to the graduate student at Loma Linda University and I have enjoyed teaching with enthusiasm with sound knowledge in cancer biology field. 

 

I have also prior experience in teaching and supervising the undergraduate students at Gandhi Medical College, Bhopal, India, as well as Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, at Los Angeles.  I have been teaching privileged to teach graduate students Cellular Mechanisms and Integrated system II (IBGS522) and IBGS 512, Winter Quarter, 2013.  I feel more comfortable and confident after I have gained my vast knowledge in extensive molecular biology and proteomics training. 

 

I have also published my work at British Journal of Cancer 2009 titled: Extracellular, cell-permeable surviving inhibits apoptosis while promoting proliferative and metastatic potential`` here at Loma Linda University.  I have come to a point where I want to find myself to invent a better cancer treatment strategies and pathway.  I have also established the exosome isolation methodologies in the lab. This work of mine was published atApoptosis 2011, titled: Survivin is released from Cancer cells via exosome. â?¨â?¨I have also published a translational research paper in PLosOne 2012, titled: Plasma-derived exosomal survivin, a plausible biomarker for early detection of prostate cancer. 

 

As a part of my career development I have been applying for the foundation Grant (Susan G-Komen for cure), Department of Defense (DOD), and national Institute of Health (NIH: RO3, K22) (submitted).  I have been collaborating with both scientists and clinicians around the nation.  I have been a reviewer of Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology Research, also involved as a reviewer of Graduate School comprehensive exam, and in the review committee of Annual Basic Science seminar for the Graduate students and post-docs.  I am also involved in teaching grant writing courses to students and post-docs at the University. 

 

In the division of Biochemistry, I can carry out research in the area of Systems Biology and Biological Regulation. We can develop a system to characterize the structural, biochemical, and in vivo functional properties of individual biomolecules and pathways with the cutting-edge approaches of modern genomics, proteomics, and metabolomics. I can train undergraduate students with the collaborations of other Universities and combine both experimental and computational approaches to model biological systems and tests the predictions of the models. A large number of investigators are addressing questions related to gene regulation at both transcriptional and post-transcriptional levels, metabolic regulation and homeostasis, regulation of cell shape and motility, intracellular transport and compartmentation, phylogenomics, and molecular evolution. Using Mass Spectrometers (GC-MS & LC-MS) we can identify differential expression of proteins in the tumor microenvironment using patients’ serum samples.

 

My recent proposed study is to identify a highly sensitive and specific molecular biomarker in thyroid cancer that can be used to effectively distinguish benign nodules in a fine needle aspiration (FNA) sample. Specifically, our team will use one-step real-time PCR technique to detect a novel oncoprotein called Enigma for the first time in all types of thyroid cancers: well-differentiated to poorly differentiated tissues.  As a graduate student in Japan, I studied morphological and pathological analysis of early placental development.  I also studied pathological analysis of rare ovarian cancer and cervical cancer biology.  I expanded this training to in-depth molecular pathology and molecular biology techniques in breast cancer and ovarian pathology during my post-doctoral training at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.  As a post-doctoral fellow at Loma Linda University (LLU), I further developed stable cell lines using cervical cancer cells to study the mechanism and interactions of an inhibitor of apoptosis protein called Survivin.  I also developed proteomic marker analysis of Survivin and its splice variants in breast cancer serum-derived exosomes (Khan et al, BMC cancer 2014).  As a Junior faculty at LLU where I am transitioning to independent and developing the thyroid cancer research program at the division of Biochemistry & Center for Health Disparities & Molecular Medicine to study thyroid cancer oncogenesis.  Collaborations with LLU faculty and outside resulted in two LLU-IRB approved protocols for obtaining primary fresh human surgical specimens and archival pathological samples that I have used to generate preliminary data.  Through a collaboration with Dr. Carr, all cell lines derived from human normal, benign, and different types of thyroid cancer tissues, will be used to establish functional interactions of two oncoproteins proposed in this study.  Having clinical background as well as a facilitator of translational research for basic scientists and as a member of Cancer Center and Internal Medicine Department, I am greatly committed to research that can be quickly transitioned to clinical use.  I can combine both biological techniques with biochemical techniques available in the division of Biochemistry and prepare them to be the expert in the future graduate school application or job field.