Pharmacognosy, Medicinal Plants and Natural Products

Dr. Alkhateeb is the Director of Assessment & Accreditation and Associate Professor of Pharmacy at Texas A&M Health Science Center Irma Lerma Rangel College of Pharmacy. Dr. Alkhateeb has been fortunate to hold a variety of leadership positions throughout his career, including serving as the Founder and Director of the Executive MBA with a concentration in Pharmaceutical & Healthcare Management at University of Charleston, West Virginia. Moreover, he has been selected as a Fellow for the Commission on Accreditation of Health Care Management Education (CAHME). Further, he has published more than 50 peer reviewed articles and over 44 presentations and proceedings related to pharmaceutical care, pharmaceutical marketing, and accreditation and assessment in pharmacy and higher education. Dr. Alkhateeb has served as a field reviewer and evaluator for the following accreditation councils: HLC-NCA, CCAPP, ACPE, ACPE- CPE, and CAHME. Moreover, Dr. Alkhateeb is a member of the 14th Annual Texas A&M Assessment Conference Planning Committee (College Station, TX). Besides being a pharmacist, Dr. Alkhateeb has an MBA degree with concentration in Pharmaceutical Marketing & Management from Aspen University and a PhD in Pharmacy Administration with a concentration in Pharmaceutical Socioeconomics from University of Iowa College of Pharmacy, Iowa.

Dr. Alkhateeb research interests focus on Pharmacy Education and Practice, and Pharmaceutical Marketing. Dr. Alkhateeb has been increasingly drawn to pharmaceutical education research and he is currently investigating the development, delivery and assessment of effective educational programs in schools of Pharmacy. Further, he has published more than 40 peer reviewed articles related to his research interests.

Dr. Ramaiah Muthyala holds Ph.D (Natural Products), Ph.D. (Heterocyclic Chemistry) and MBA (International Management). He is Fellow of Royal Society of Chemistry. Among other awards, he received SC Amita award from the Indian Chemical Society. He has been editor or and coeditor of books, book chapters and has been in editorial boards of ARKIVOC, Mini-reviews in Medicinal Chemistry. For the last 12 years, Dr. Muthyala has been at the University of Minnesota where he was Associate Director, Center for Drug Design, and Associate Director (pre-clinical development) Center for Orphan Drug Research. He is also Associate Professor, Department of Experimental Clinical Pharmacology and Adjunct Professor, Department of Medicine. His research interests focused in rare diseases - the discovery and development of therapeutics for drug resistant bacterial infections, neurological diseases such as SCA1 and hemoglobinopathy such sickle cell disease. In his research, drug repositioning takes major emphasis to discovering drug leads.

The vision of our research program is to translate biological and chemical information into leads to drug-like molecules and optimize the lead small molecules to drug molecules using synthetic organic chemistry. The drug discovery will be combined with structure information obtained from ligand-protein structures, enzyme data derived from computational, modeling and biological experiments. The potential for speedy optimization of drug discovery, selective and carefully designed combinatorial small libraries along with rapid, sensitive and specific assay procedures are being explored. Natural products with desired biological activity at nanomolar range are considered as informed lead compounds for further development into drug candidates.

Professor of Pharmacy Practice and Director, Center for Advancement of Drug Research and Evaluation, College of Pharmacy, Western University of Health Sciences, Pomona, USA. Professor Moses SS Chow was awarded his Doctor of Pharmacy in 1972 from the University of California, San Francisco, USA; and he completed his residency in Clinical Pharmacy at VA Hospital, Palo Alto, USA.Currently, Professor Chow is Professor of Pharmacy Practice and Director of the Center for Advancement of Drug Research and Evaluation (CADRE), College of Pharmacy at the Western University of Health Sciences, Pomona, USA. He is also an adjunct professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, China.

Dr. Chow has over 30 years of experience in transitional research and clinical studies in the areas of cardiovascular pharmacotherapy and application of pharmacokinetics/pharmacogenomics. His recent research work has been devoted to the development of conventional drugs and herbal medicines (Chinese medicines). He has also established a strong net work with Asian countries, especially China where he served as Director of the Pharmacy School in Hong Kong for 8 years. As Director of the newly established Center for Drug Research and Evaluation at Western U, the focus of his research will be the development of niche pharmaceutical products via formulation optimization as well as new therapeutic approaches. This will be accomplished via collaborative efforts among members in formulation science, bio-analysis/ pharmacokinetics, pharmacology/pharmacogenetics and clinical/outcome studies.

Dr. Hechmi TOUMI graduated from the University Blaise Pascal, Researcher assistant at Wisconsin University and awarded professor at the University of Wales, UK. He is currently a professor of Muscular Skeletal Pathology, the Dean of the Faculty of Science and Technology at the Orleans University France, Vice Director Laboratory EA 4708 - I3MTO and Vice President of the Institute of Research, Treatment & Prevention of Osteoporosis. Hechmi Toumi founded Demasq, Cardiff UK Limited in February 2008 and also serves as its Chief Scientific Officer. He is the inventor of the international patent filing on the use of algorithmic analyses to identify and quantify ‘invisible’ detail in soft tissues in standard radiographs. Professor Toumi is a Member of the Editorial boards the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise and Journal of Foot and Ankle. His research focuses on Bone, Cartilage and soft tissue injuries. He has lectured worldwide on the Pathologies, Treatment and Prevention of muscular skeletal injuries.

His clinical interest is the assessment of pathoanatomical features of the Knee joint. He has developed a tertiary referral clinic for the investigation and management of knee pain with Professor John Fairclough highly qualified Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeons at the CMAT centre (Centre for Musculoskeletal Analysis and Therapy, Cardiff UK) where there is provision both diagnostic and therapeutic rehabilitation and is widely used by professional and amateur sports teams and individuals. He recently created jointly with Dr Eric Lespessailles (Rheumatologist and Professor associate at Orleans university) private referral clinic at the Regional Hospital at Orleans for the investigation and management of knee pain

2009 - present Assistant Professor in Department of Molecular Science and Technology, Ajou University, Korea 2002 - 2003 Post Doct., in Institute for Medicine and Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, USA 2001 - 2002 Post Doct., in Department of Chemistry, University of Massachusetts Lowell, USA 1998 - 2001 Ph.D., in Department of Electronic Chemistry, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan 1986 - 1990 B.S., in Department of Polymer Science and Engineering, Inha University, Korea 1996-1998 M.S., in Department of Polymer Science and Engineering, Inha University, Korea

Polymer Science and Engineering

Filippo Boniforti has degeed at the age of 26 years from Universita’ degli Studi di Milano School of Medicine and specialized in orthopedics surgery. He is the director of the Orthopedic Department of the Fondazione San Raffaele Giglio di Cefalu (I). He has published more than twenty papers in reputed journals and serving as an editorial board member of repute orthopedic societies.

He leads orthopaedic hospital unit, 16 beds for orthoapedic treatments. He runs surgical theatre for more than 800 procedures per year. Hip and knee joint replacement (primary and revision) are the most significant filds of interest (>300 procs/year), pediatric orthopaedics and, proteogenomics.

Twenty years of experience studying of the role of the preotic anterior hypothalamic area in the central control of host defense mechanisms; LPS effects on neurotransmitters and hypothalamic releasing hormones, LPS-fever, and endotoxic hypotension, make me well suited to be the Principal Investigator in the project with Dr. Arnold Johnson as Co-Investigator. The proposal pertains to the elucidation of the role of preoptic hypothalamic endocannbinoids in the lung response to endotoxemia. After five years of postdoctoral research associate/instructor and research assistant professor positions at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and the University of Tennessee, Health Science Center, respectively, I accepted a tenure track Assistant Professor position at Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences in the fall of 2005. I have been successful in transitioning from a purely Research environment to one that has more balance of teaching and research. I successfully taught large lecture pathophysiology and pharmacology courses, a small neuroimmunology elective course and a graduate topics course in inflammation and prostaglandins. At the same time, I have developed my lab to the point where it is producing publishable data and is attracting both undergraduate and graduate students. I obtained an R15 AREA grant in the field of LPS fever and fellowships for students in the lab. As a result, I was promoted to Associate professor with tenure. To date, I have mentored 18 undergraduate students (both B.S. and Pharm.D. students) in my lab. Recently, one of these students, Janey James, was accepted at Mount Sinai Hospital, New York, NY, Graduate program. Three of my undergraduate students have competed for and received ACPHS Student Summer Research Awards to pursue research with me during the summers. I am also actively participating in mentoring students in the MS Pharmaceutical Sciences program with one of my graduate students successfully defending her thesis last week and accepted into the prestigious PhD program in immunology at Rutgers University. The undergraduate and graduate students in my lab have been major contributors to my research program in the last 9 years as evidenced by the publication/presentations in national and international meetings, and manuscripts under preparation/submitted (11, 12, 13, 15). In addition to these publications and presentations, students from my lab are the first author/co-author on two other manuscripts that are currently under review.

Host defense mechanisms,LPS effects on neurotransmitters