DZ
DefZone.Net

Kien thuc cong nghe & giai tri

Wiki Article

Draft:Mala Shah

Nguồn dữ liệu từ Wikipedia, hiển thị bởi DefZone.Net

Xem trên WikipediaBài ngẫu nhiên khác
  • Comment: She has made a good start. However, the bar for WP:NPROF is quite high. As yet her citations are not high enough (e.g. h-factor > 40), and she has no major peer awards. Getting grants is irrelevant, all academics get those! Ldm1954 (talk) 13:35, 4 October 2025 (UTC)
Mala Shah
Awards
Academic background
Education
ThesisThe Characterisation and Pharmacology of the Slow Afterhyperpolarization in Cultured Rat Hippocampal Pyramidal Cells
Academic work
DisciplineNeuroscientist
InstitutionsUniversity College London

Mala Mahendra Shah (born 1975) is a British cellular and molecular neuroscientist.[1] Her research focuses on "subcellular distribution and function of neuronal voltage-gated ion channels; neural dendrite physiology; synaptic integration; ion channel pharmacology; and temporal lobe epilepsy."[2] She is the professor of neuroscience at University College London, England.[3]

Early life and education

[edit]

Shah graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree pharmacy and pharmacology from the University of Bath, England in 1997.[4] She learned she wanted to pursue research while working on her dissertation at the University of Groningen through the Erasmus programme to. “Suddenly, everything was exciting because I was finally able to investigate, with my own hands, something I have been feeling curious about,” she explained, “I have always wanted to dig deeper, I like questioning everything and I found that research is where that attitude finds its place.”[5] She credits her “grandparents’ agricultural roots” for her interest in life sciences. “They gave me an appreciation of the fascinating variety of life in nature and a sense of care towards the space where humans and the environment interact,” Shah said, “Incredible compounds exist in nature, complicated, imaginative (or random, if you prefer) and most different, all with their power and their purpose. It’s beautiful.”[6] She was also inspired by the scientific contributions of Italian astrophysicist Margherita Hack and Nobel laureate in neurobiology Rita Levi-Montalcini.[5]

She joined the Department of Pharmacology, University College London (DPUL) to pursue a Doctorate in Philosophy, studying the characterization and pharmacology of the slow afterhyperpolarization in cultured rat hippocampal pyramidal cells under the expert supervision of Dennis Haylett.[7][8]

In 2001, she was awarded the Wellcome International Prize Travel Research Fellowship by Wellcome Trust[9] to join Daniel Johnston's laboratory at the Baylor College of Medicine (Texas, USA) where she worked as a postdoctoral research associate to investigate ion channel properties and function in entorhinal cortical dendrites under physiologic and epileptic conditions. She returned to DPUL in 2004 as a senior research fellow in David Brown's laboratory to continue her research, funded by the Wellcome Trust and Epilepsy Research Foundation, on the functional significance of subcellular distribution of ion channels in hippocampal and cortical neurons during normal and epileptogenic conditions.[10][4][11]

After winning the Medical Research Council (MRC) New Investigator Award in 2007, Shah was appointed as a lecturer at the UCL School of Pharmacy (UCL SP). She was promoted to a reader in 2011 and a professor in 2014.[8][4] [5] From 2015–20, she directed the Master of Research (MRes) programme at UCL SP. She is currently the professor of neuroscience at PDUL.[3]

Research

[edit]

In 2006, Shah was awarded an Epilepsy Research Foundation grant worth £60,000 to study treatment effectiveness during the latent period that occurs between the precipitating insult (e.g. head injury or stroke) and the onset of spontaneous seizures or chronic temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). “During the latent period neurones in one part of the brain become more active. Due to several factors, the neurones become very excitable and this causes seizures,” Shah explained, “I, together with Dr. Matthew Walker (UCL Neurology), am going to be looking at whether administration of anti-epileptic drugs during this period can calm the activity down."[12]

Shah received £362,880 as part of her 2007 New Investigator Award from the Medical Research Council (MRC) to study the possible molecular mechanisms responsible for hyperpolarization-activated cyclic nucleotide (HCN) downregulation in entorhinal cortex (EC) neurones during the latent period. She used animal models and biochemical methods to investigate if a decrease in calcium/calmodulin dependent kinase (CaMKII) expression causes hyperpolarization-activated cation current (lh) downregulation. Through this research (2008–2011), Shah aimed to highlight the significance of Ih plasticity during the latent period, understand the mechanisms that may initiate the TLE process, and identify novel treatment strategies.[13][14]

Shah received the European Research Council (ERC) Starter Independent Grant in 2010 to study the role of pre-synaptic HCN1 channels in the regulation of cortical synaptic transmission and plasticity, for which she was awarded the 2013 GlaxoSmithKline Prize (Lecture) at The Physiological Society’s International Union of Physiological Society meeting.[3][15][2]

A UCL SP research team comprising Shah and Frances Stephenson received a £644,956 grant from Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) for a 2013–17 project on the regulation and impact of TRAK-mediated neuronal mitochondrial trafficking mechanisms.[16][17][18] They used electrophysiological recordings and photon imaging of adult rodent brain slices to investigate where neuronal network activity is retained in the brain and determine the importance of synaptic transmission and dendritic information processing. Biochemical techniques and live imaging of hippocampal neurons were employed to understand "whether the post-translational modification of the complex regulates protein-protein interactions that determine formation or dissociation and thereby mitochondrial transport." Given that the aberrant distribution of mitochondria is a feature of debilitating neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's. Shah and Stephenson set out to test the hypothesis that defects in mitochondrial transport might be a contributing or causative factor to disease processes.[16]

In 2022, a research team comprising Shah, Joseph Nicolazzo (Monash University, Melbourne, Australia), and Raymond Norton (Monash University) received funding from PharmAlliance Research Domain, as part if their new PharmAlliance Research Clusters for Doctoral Training (PARCDT) funding scheme, for the development of blood-brain barrier-targeted peptide therapeutics for neurological and neurodegenerative diseases.[19]

Shah was the co-investigator on two MRC-funded projects between 2022–25 and 2025–29 respectively: how loss of UNC13A, a protein-coded gene, exacerbates amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and the development of new therapies for ALS/frontotemporal dementia (FTD) through the dissection of early dysregulation of neuronal output in humans.[20][18]

External engagements

[edit]

Shah is a member of The Physiological Society UK, British Neuroscience Association and The American Society for Neuroscience. She served on the editorial board of British Journal of Pharmacology from 2021 to 2025, Journal of Biological Chemistry from 2012 to 2022, and Pflügers Archiv European Journal of Physiology from 2010 to 2013. Since 2010, She has been the review editor of Frontiers in Pharmacology of Ion Channels and Channelopathies and Frontiers for Membrane Physiology and Biophysics since 2010 and 2011 respectively.[10]

Selected Publications

[edit]

Book chapters

[edit]
  • Shah, M. M. (2014-01-01), Aminoff, M. J.; Daroff, R. B. (eds.). "Dendrites". Encyclopedia of the Neurological Sciences (Second Edition). Oxford: Academic Press. p.970. doi:10.1016/b978-0-12-385157-4.00056-7, ISBN 978-0-12-385158-1.

Books

[edit]

Journal articles

[edit]
  • Di, C.; Wu, T.; Gao, K.; Li, Na; Song, H.; Wang, L.; Sun, H.; Yi, J.; Zhang, X.; Chen, J.; Shah, M.; Jiang, Y.; Huang, Z. (2024-10-07). "Carvedilol inhibits neuronal hyperexcitability caused by epilepsy-associated KCNT1 mutations". British Journal of Pharmacology. ISSN 1019-8768.
  • Shah, M. M. (2021-07). "A new HCN1 channelopathy: Implications for epilepsy". Brain. 144 (7): 1939–1940.
  • Topczewska, A.; Giacalone, E.; Pratt, W. S.; Migliore, M.; Dolphin, A. C.; Shah, M. M. (2021-05-08). "T-type Ca2+ and persistent Na+ currents synergistically elevate ventral, not dorsal, entorhinal cortical stellate cell excitability". Cell Reports. 42 (7). Article 112699. doi:10.1101/2021.05.07.443063
  • Santoro, B.; Shah, M. M. (2020-01). "Hyperpolarization-Activated Cyclic Nucleotide-Gated Channels as Drug Targets for Neurological Disorders". Annual Review of Pharmacology and Toxicology. 60: 109–131.

References

[edit]
  1. ^ "Mala Mahendra Shah". gov.uk.
  2. ^ a b "Mala Shah | IUPS 2013". iups2013.org. Retrieved 2025-10-02.
  3. ^ a b c "Mala Shah - UCL". profiles.ucl.ac.uk. Retrieved 2025-10-02.
  4. ^ a b c "Mala Shah - ORCHID". orcid.org. Retrieved 2025-10-02.
  5. ^ a b c admin (2022-03-08). "Celebrating some of our academics from the School of Pharmacy this International Women's Day | Faculty of Life Sciences". www.ucl.ac.uk. Retrieved 2025-10-06.
  6. ^ admin (2022-03-08). "Celebrating some of our academics from the School of Pharmacy this International Women's Day | Faculty of Life Sciences". www.ucl.ac.uk. Retrieved 2025-10-06.
  7. ^ Shah, Mala. "The Characterisation and Pharmacology of the Slow Afterhyperpolarization in Cultured Rat Hippocampal Pyramidal Cells" (PDF).
  8. ^ a b Shah, Mala M. (2014-07-01). "Cortical HCN channels: function, trafficking and plasticity". The Journal of Physiology. 592 (13): 2711–2719. doi:10.1113/jphysiol.2013.270058. ISSN 1469-7793. PMC 4104471. PMID 24756635.
  9. ^ Shah, Mala M.; Anderson, Anne E.; Leung, Victor; Lin, Xiaodi; Johnston, Daniel (2004-10-28). "Seizure-Induced Plasticity of h Channels in Entorhinal Cortical Layer III Pyramidal Neurons". Neuron. 44 (3): 495–508. doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2004.10.011. ISSN 0896-6273. PMC 2386958. PMID 15504329.
  10. ^ a b "Mala Shah - British Journal of Pharmacology" (PDF).
  11. ^ "The History of Neuroscience in Autobiography" (PDF). Society for Neuroscience. doi:10.1523/hon.013008.
  12. ^ UCL (2006-06-01). "UCL receives grant from Epilepsy Research Foundation". UCL News. Retrieved 2025-10-06.
  13. ^ "Dendritic hyperpolarization-activated cation channels in entorhinal cortical neurons and temporal lobe epilepsy". gtr.ukri.org. Retrieved 2025-10-02.
  14. ^ Shah, Mala M.; Hammond, Rebecca S.; Hoffman, Dax A. (2010-07-01). "Dendritic ion channel trafficking and plasticity". Trends in Neurosciences. 33 (7): 307–316. doi:10.1016/j.tins.2010.03.002. ISSN 0166-2236. PMID 20363038.
  15. ^ "List of selected principal investigators - ERC" (PDF). European Research Council.
  16. ^ a b "TRAK-mediated neuronal mitochondrial trafficking mechanisms: regulation and impact on neuronal function". gtr.ukri.org. Retrieved 2025-10-02.
  17. ^ "TRAK-mediated neuronal mitochondrial trafficking mechanisms: regulation and impact on neuronal function - Dimensions". app.dimensions.ai. Retrieved 2025-10-02.
  18. ^ a b "GtR profile - Mala Shah". gtr.ukri.org. Retrieved 2025-10-02.
  19. ^ "Two Projects Funded in 2022 Grant Cycle – PharmAlliance". 2022-01-13. Retrieved 2025-10-02.
  20. ^ "Dissecting the early dysregulation of neuronal output in human neurons: an opportunity for a functional rescue of ALS/FTD". gtr.ukri.org. Retrieved 2025-10-02.

Category:Articles with suppressed authority control identifiers


This page will be placed in the following categories if it is moved to the article namespace.
Categories: