Principal Lecturer in Biochemistry and Course Leader for Biomedical Science
Bushra's PhD was related to the study of neurodegenerative disorders, learning and memory. After completion of her PhD she moved to the USA for post-doctoral studies and joined Dr Martha Pierson’s lab at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston Texas followed by Scott-Rotchey Research Center, Auburn University Alabama. Her post-doctoral studies were related to epilepsy, programmed cell death and gene therapy.
On arriving in the UK she joined Dr Patrick Anderson’s lab at the University College London (UCL). There, her project was to determine the role of certain genes involved in axonal regeneration following brain injury using gene therapy technology, she joined the University of Bedfordshire in 2005.
Qualifications
- PhD in Neuroscience, Kagawa Medical University, Japan
- MSc, Karachi, Pakistan
- BSc, Karachi, Pakistan
- FHEA, University of Bedfordshire
Research Interests
- Gene therapy
- Brain injury
- Neuronal survival
- Memory impairment
- Programmed cell death (apoptosis).
Research Projects
- The conditional inactivation of genes using Cre recombinase system and gene therapy technology. Inactivating genes in vivo is an important technique for establishing their function in the adult nervous system.
- The role of RNA binding protein(s) in regulation of cytoskeletal genes in rat brain and in embryonic cortical cultured cells under both normal and RNA binding protein’s over expressed conditions utilizing viral vectors to transfer the gene to non-dividing cells.
- Stem cell research, which offers great potential to treat neurodegenerative disorders.
External Roles
- Fellow of IBMS
- Fellow of Higher Education Academy
- Member of Society for Neuroscience
Selected Publications
- Ahmed B. Y. Exercise as a neuroprotective mechanism in Parkinson’s disease: Future treatment potential? British Journal of Neuroscience Nursing 4:11(2008).
- Ahmed B.Y., Chakravarthy S., Eggers R., Hermens W,T.J.M.C., Zhang J.Y., Nicolu S., Levelett C., Sablitzky F., Anderson P., Lieberman A. R., and Verhaagen J., Efficient delivery of Cre-recombinase to adult mouse brain using adeno-associated and lentiviral vectors, BMC Neuroscience 5 (2004) 4-15
- Samoylova T.I., Ahmed B.Y., Vodyanoy V., Morrison N.E., Samoylova A.M., Globa L.P., Baker H.J., and Cox N.R., Targeting peptides for microglia identified via phage display. J. Neuroimmunology127 (2002) 13-21
- Ahmed B. Y., Yamaguchi F., Tsumura T., Gotoh T., Sugimoto K., Tai Y., Konishi R., Kobayashi R. and Tokuda M., Expression and subcellular localization of multifunctional calmodulin-dependent protein kinases-I, II and –IV are altered in rat hippocampal CA1 neurons after induction of long term potentiation. Neuroscience letters 290 (2000)149-153.
- Chen Y-R., Meyer C., Ahmed B. Y., Yao Z. and Tan T-H., Caspase-mediated cleavage and functional changes of hematopoietic progenitor kinase 1 (HPK1). Oncogene 18 (1999) 7370-7377
Contact details
T: +44 (0)1582 743097
E: bushra.ahmed@beds.ac.uk
