A University of Sharjah-College of Pharmacy student, partly sponsored by leading pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim, has won two awards at the annual Think Science Competition, which is organised by Emirates Foundation for Youth Development.  

Pharmacy graduate Lujain Aloum, and her teammates, Mohammad Rourou and Amer Koraiem, received first prize in the universities category for Applied Sciences and Engineering, as well as the grand prize for all sciences across UAE universities, said a statement.

The nationwide science competition, launched in October 2012 by Emirates Foundation for Youth Development, aims to encourage the UAE youth to develop, design, and build science-based innovations that respond to society’s most pressing needs.

This year’s Think Science Competition was divided into 12 categories, with separate sections for school and university participants, and had 200 submissions from innovators across the UAE.

Aloum, Koraiem, and Rourou’s winning project, ‘Design and Synthesis of Selective HDACs as Anticancer Lead Candidates,’ focused on selectively inhibiting proteins closely related to cancer, diabetes, and neurological diseases.  

With the support and motivation of the University of Sharjah and Sharjah Institute for Medical Research, Boehringer Ingelheim, Emirates Foundation (Think Science), and in collaboration with Harvard University, Aloum and her team were able to conduct the necessary research and test their hypothesis.  

With the hope of continuing and moving forward with the project, the involved parties have taken the necessary steps in order to possibly patent the findings and/or publish it in leading international journals.  

“We are extremely honoured to have won these awards in such a prestigious competition.  Thanks to the support and guidance of the University of Sharjah, Emirates Foundation (Think Science) and Boehringer Ingelheim, we have been able to reach very interesting results that we hope will aid in the development of reaching a treatment for these diseases,” said Aloum.

The winners had initially participated in a two-day workshop organised by the university and Boehringer Ingelheim, targeted at senior medical students, which is aimed at helping enhance research and development (R&D), scientific training and building on educational partnership for students in the field of scientific research and health sciences.  

The workshop was a continuation of the memorandum of inderstanding (MoU) signed in 2013 between Boehringer Ingelheim and the University of Sharjah with an objective of empowering the student community.

Prof Taleb AlTel, acting director of Sharjah Institute for Medical Research-University  of Sharjah, who also supervised the winners, said: “We are proud of Lujain and her teammates’ accomplishments at the Think Science Competition, and we hope that they will set an example and encourage other students to take the initiative of working on such projects. Let me use this opportunity and say that, Sharjah Institute for Medical Research is one of the leading research institutions in the region, our main research focus is cancer and diabetes related research at the molecular as well as at the drug design and discovery levels.

“Furthermore, The College of Pharmacy at the University of Sharjah is considered one of the leading schools in pharmacy in the region. The University of Sharjah will continue to work with Boehringer Ingelheim and offer annual workshops such as the one that Lujain took part in in order to provide our students with the necessary tools and skills to conduct their own research.”

Dr Mohamed Meshref, regional medical and regulatory director Middle East, Turkey and Africa, Boehringer Ingelheim, said: “Since its establishment, Boehringer Ingelheim has placed a great deal of emphasis on research and development (R&D) in order to provide patients with better quality of life, which has contributed to the success of the company.   

“The workshop highlights this commitment to supporting and aiding in the advancement of research, innovation, and medical education for academic centres and schools of medicine, pharmacy, and public health. By collaborating with institutions such as the University of Sharjah, we hope to reach our goal of enriching students’ education with a practical understanding of the work taking place in our industry and the research field.”

Boehringer Ingelheim and the University of Sharjah will also host another workshop in the coming school year with new students.  

The pharma company will pursue the funding of research papers to fulfill activities outlined in the memo, in order to put students’ new and innovative research ideas on the forefront, inspiring further R&D and fuelling innovation and knowledge transfer. - TradeArabia News Service