HMC expert appointed to top US research panel

Dr Mohamed poses next to a poster at an event held recently in Washington, DC.

Dr Ramzi Mohamed, head of research division at Hamad Medical Corporation’s Medicine Department, has been selected to be part of the prestigious committee reviewing research grants applications in the US.

Dr Mohamed was invited by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) to be one of the official reviewers of their grant proposals.

The committee, which is the highest healthcare grants authority in the US, meets in Washington, DC and oversees millions of dollars of grants for research each year.

Dr Mohamed has more than 25 years of translational research, including extensive experience in molecular biology, animal models and tissue culture.

He has established a number of cancer cell lines and was among the first to establish orthotopic animal models in which he has years of experience, studying the effects of new anti-cancer agents, marine products and standard chemotherapeutic drugs.

“The NIH is an agency of the US Department of Health and Human Services and is the primary agency of the government responsible for biomedical and health-related research,” Dr Mohamed said adding: “This process is very competitive and its objective is to acquire new knowledge that helps prevent, detect, diagnose and treat disease (and disabilities).”

Dr Mohamed, who joined HMC late last year, was the GI-Cancer Research director at the Wayne State University in Michigan in the US.

He is a recipient of funding by the National Cancer Institute at the NIH and is the principle investigator of three active grants worth millions of dollars. 

Recently, Dr Mohamed’s team was able to publish in the prestigious journal of Gastroenterology (Impact factor of 12); the journal also honoured him by putting his article printed on the cover of the February 2013 issue.

“My vision is to return to the Middle East in order to support and encourage young Qatari and Arab clinicians to enter into science and research field. I hope our team can introduce new clinical research standards based on the latest internationally recognised practices,” Dr Mohamed said.

“It is a great honour for me, being invited to participate in this unique opportunity to showcase the great work being done at HMC with our peers in the research community. I especially want to thank Prof Hillhouse, Dr Janahi, Dr Abou-Samra, Sadaf, Cameron, and the entire engineering team for their strenuous efforts in keeping things at great standard.  I hope our upcoming Interim Translational Research Institute project will be finished by the end of this year,” he said.

Dr Mohamed’s main goal in Qatar is to establish a fully functioning research centre for the Internal Medicine Department at HMC; leading both translational and basic research projects, training multi-talented MD residents in various fields, and to help more research papers to be published by HMC physicians.