Owais Mohammad


Owais Mohammad is an Indian immunologist, nano-technologist and a professor at the interdisciplinary biotechnology unit of the Aligarh Muslim University. Known for his studies on nanotechnology-based vaccine and drug delivery, Owais is the author of two books, Trypanothione reductase: a potential anti-leishmanial drug target and Antimicrobial properties of clove oil: clove oils as antimicrobial agent. He has also co-edited two books, Modern Phytomedicine: Turning Medicinal Plants into Drugs and Combating Fungal Infections: Problems and Remedy, and has contributed chapters. His studies have also been documented by way of a number of articles and ResearchGate, an online repository of scientific articles has listed 60 of them. He is a recipient of the Rashtriya Gaurav Award of the India International Friendship Society. The Department of Biotechnology of the Government of India awarded him the National Bioscience Award for Career Development, one of the highest Indian science awards, for his contributions to biosciences in 2007. His work has been displayed on cover pages of FEMS Immunol. Med Microbiology for all the issues of Year 2006 and Molecular Medicine in May–June issue of Year 2007.

Education and Career

Owais did his undergraduate and post-graduate studies in Pharmacy from Delhi University, India, after which he pursued his doctoral research from Institute of Microbial Technology, one of premier biotechnology institutes in India and Panjab University, Chandigarh, under the mentorship of Prof. C. M. Gupta. Later, he joined National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, USA as Fogarty Post Doctoral Fellow, where he worked on HIV. During his stay at NIH, he demonstrated that the introduction of HIV-1 genome into PBMCs blocks the propagation of HIV-2 viruses. His work on the antiviral chemokine, RANTES established that the amino-terminal domain of the chemokine was not essential for its antiviral activity or for its binding to the CCR5 receptor. He is currently serving as a professor of biotechnology at Interdisciplinary Biotechnology Unit, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, working in the area of drug delivery since his joining in 1998.

Details of the Excellence in Research Work

Besides active involvement in teaching modern biochemistry/biotechnology courses to M.Sc./Ph.D students, Owais has successfully established a small but active research group with focus on nanoparticle-based novel delivery systems including dendrimers/virosomes for gene packaging and liposomes, niosomes, microspheres and solid core lipid nano-particles for vaccine delivery, gene delivery, targeted drug delivery etc.; with a view to increase the efficacy and safety of encapsulated chemotherapeutic agents/subunit vaccines for some important infectious diseases.
The research focus of Dr. Owais’s group has been on:
Reckoning with the limitations of conventional vaccine, the main focus of Dr. Owais’s research endeavors has been to develop nano-vaccines against various infectious diseases of bacterial, protozoan and fungal origin.
In general, specialized groups of pathogens adapt intra-cellular parasitism as a strategy to avoid antibody onslaught. Keeping into consideration the non-effectiveness of humoral immune response against such intracellular pathogens, Dr. Owais evaluated potential of fusogenic lipid based vaccines as an alternative prophylactic strategy. In this regard, he has compared lipid compositions of plasma membranes of both prokaryotic as well as eukaryotic cells. These studies established a correlation between the lipid compositions of plasma membranes of living organisms with evolutionary trend. Lipid isolated from lower organisms possesses strong fusogenic potential. He established that model antigens entrapped in liposomes made up of fusogenic lipids, can be delivered to the target cells including antigen presenting cells, resulting in both the endo/lysosomal and cytosolic degradation pathways for antigen processing. The dual processing of antigens in the antigen presenting cells activated both the CD4+ T helper as well as CD8+ cytotoxic T cells. Further, he established that immunization with fusogenic liposomes resulted in expression of both IL-2 and IFN-γ, the two key cytokines that eventually help in protection against intracellular infections.
Keeping in view that sperm-ova fusion during zygote formation is generally facilitated by specific lipid compositions of the two cell populations, he demonstrated the fusogenic attributes of sperm plasma membrane lipids, and established the prophylactic potential of spermatosome based vaccines against various intracellular pathogens. As conventional egg phophatidylcholine based liposomes are of limlited application in activation of pathogen specific CTL response required for inhibiting intracellular pathogens, he developed non-PC liposome as vehicle for delivery of antigens in prophylactic treatment of experimental leishmaniasis. Further, the liposome/niosome based vaccines were also found to be effective against malaria parasite. In addition, he has prepared archael lipid based liposomes and demonstrated their immunoadjuvant potential in model animals. Of note, the archaeosome based vaccine were used to mount long lasting memory response against experimental listeriosis.
Further, Dr. Owais has highlighted interactions between two mycobacterial proteins viz. Rv3619 and Rv3620. He demonstrated that Rv3619 protein disrupted the biomembrane and also evoked a strong immunological response. Moreover, it was revealed that nanoparticle mediated targeting of RD9 gene products to dendritic cells favors Th1 prototype of CD4+ T lymphocytes. He had successfully expressed L7/L12 ribosomal protein, SOD-IL-18 fusion protein of Brucella spp. and trypanothione reductase of Leishmania donavani. The recombinant proteins were used as potent subunit vaccines in protection studies. Liposome-based DNA vaccine developed by Dr. Owais has shown remarkable promise against experimental murine brucellosis.
Besides introducing liposome, niosome and microsphere based novel particulate vaccines; Dr. Owais has recently employed an autologous plasma bead based dual antigen delivery system as a prophylactic strategy against intracellular infections. The liposome/microsphere entrapped antigen further co-entrapped in dual core fibrin beads based vaccine was shown to eliminate intracellular pathogens from systemic circulation.

''Targeted nano-delivery system''

s have been widely considered useful as drug/enzyme/nucleic acid vehicles in therapy. However, their successful application was limited by their rapid lysis in blood, major uptake by the RES, and lack of availability of simple procedures for specific targeted delivery. The main emphasis of Dr. Owais has been therefore on addressing some of the problems associated with the liposomes as drug delivery systems. He demonstrated that covalent attachment of anti-erythrocyte F2 to the liposomes surface enables the liposomes to specifically recognize the erythrocytes in vivo and deliver their contents to these cells. It was further demonstrated that the entrapment of anti-malarial drugs like chloroquine, in the antibody-coated liposomes increases the drug efficacy not only against the chq-sensitive but also against the chq-resistant malarial infections. Encouraged by these results, the liposomes were coated with F2 fragments of a monoclonal antibody which specifically recognized the malaria-infected erythrocytes. The monoclonal antibody bearing liposomes with encapsulated chq were found to be highly effective in the treatment of chq-resistant experimental malaria.

Awards and Honors

He was awarded the Young Scientist Award in Life Sciences in 2002. Aligarh Muslim University bestowed him with Outstanding University Researcher Award in 2008 and again with the Best Teacher Award in 2009. The Department of Biotechnology of the Government of India awarded him the National Bioscience Award for Career Development, one of the highest Indian science awards in 2007. In 2013, he received the TATA Innovation Award by DBT, Govt. of India and IIFS-Rashtriya Gaurav Award. Other notable awards include VIFRA Distinguished Research Scientist Award-2015 and Indus Research Excellence Award-2015.
Owais is Member of Editorial Boards of various international journals including The open Vaccine Journal, BioMed Research International, Journal of Clinical Medicine Research, Journal of Chinese Clinical Medicine, Biomedical Research, World Journal of Critical infectious diseases, World Journal of Experimental medicine.

Selected bibliography

Books

Nanomedicine

J Antimicrob Chemother

Biochim Biophys Acta

Vaccine

Int J Nanomed

PLOS One