Ilma Shakeel, PhD

Dr. Ilma Shakeel is currently working as a Project Research Scientist-I at All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi, India. She has worked as a Ph.D. Scholar at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Basic Sciences (CIRBSc), Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI), New Delhi, India. She earned her Ph.D. in Molecular and Structural Biology, with her research primarily focused on “Studying the mechanism of Sphingosine Kinase 1 and identifying its inhibitors targeting lung cancer therapy.” Her areas of interest include structural biology, molecular docking, protein expression and purification using Ni-NTA column chromatography, Protein-ligand interaction, and in vitro cell-based assays on lung cancer cell lines (H1299 & A549). As part of her research, she worked on a project titled "Structure-based Design and Development of Selective Sphingosine Kinase 1 Inhibitors to Combat Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis", which aims to synthesize, identify, and characterize novel inhibitors for SphK1 targeting Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis or pulmonary cancer. Ilma Shakeel has been awarded with CSIR-UGC NET, GATE, and Best Research Award in support of their academic and research pursuits. She has contributed to scientific literature with several publications:

1. Shakeel I, Khan S, Roy S, Sherwani F, Ahmad SF, Sohal SS, Afzal M, Hassan MI. Investigating potential of cholic acid, syringic acid, and mangiferin as cancer therapeutics through sphingosine kinase 1 inhibition. Int J Biol Macromol. 2023 Dec 31;253(Pt 5):127036. (Impact factor: 7.7)

2. Shakeel I, Haider S, Khan S, Ahmed S, Hussain A, Alajmi MF, Chakrabarty A, Afzal M, Hassan MI. Thymoquinone, artemisinin, and thymol attenuate proliferation of lung cancer cells as Sphingosine kinase 1 inhibitors. Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy. 2024 Aug 12;177:117123. (Impact factor: 7.5)

3. Shakeel I, Ashraf A, Afzal M, Sohal SS, Islam A, Kazim SN, Hassan MI. The Molecular Blueprint for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD): A New Paradigm for Diagnosis and Therapeutics. Oxid Med Cell Longev. 2023 Dec 21;2023:2297559. (Impact factor: 7.3)

4. Lu W, Teoh A, Waters M, Haug G, Shakeel I, Hassan I, Shahzad AM, Callerfelt AK, Piccari L, Sohal SS. Pathology of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis with particular focus on vascular endothelium and epithelial injury and their therapeutic potential. Pharmacology & Therapeutics. 2024 Nov 23:108757. (Impact factor: 12.0)