Owais Mohammad is an Indian immunologist, nano-technologist and a professor at the interdisciplinary biotechnology unit of the Aligarh Muslim University.
[4] He has also co-edited two books, Modern Phytomedicine: Turning Medicinal Plants into Drugs[5] and Combating Fungal Infections: Problems and Remedy,[6] and has contributed chapters.
The research focus of Dr. Owais’s group has been on: Reckoning with the limitations of conventional vaccine, the main focus of Dr. Owais’s research endeavors has been to develop nano-vaccines against various infectious diseases of bacterial (tuberculosis, salmonellosis, listeriosis and brucellosis), protozoan (malaria, leishmaniasis) and fungal (candidasis and cryoptococcosis) origin.
Keeping into consideration the non-effectiveness of humoral immune response against such intracellular pathogens, Dr. Owais evaluated potential of fusogenic lipid based vaccines as an alternative prophylactic strategy.
[17][18][19] Further, he established that immunization with fusogenic liposomes resulted in expression of both IL-2 and IFN-γ, the two key cytokines that eventually help in protection against intracellular infections.
[17] Keeping in view that sperm-ova fusion during zygote formation is generally facilitated by specific lipid compositions of the two cell populations, he demonstrated the fusogenic attributes of sperm plasma membrane lipids,[14] and established the prophylactic potential of spermatosome based vaccines against various intracellular pathogens.
[23] Moreover, it was revealed that nanoparticle mediated targeting of RD9 gene products to dendritic cells favors Th1 prototype of CD4+ T lymphocytes.
[29] The liposome/microsphere entrapped antigen further co-entrapped in dual core fibrin beads based vaccine was shown to eliminate intracellular pathogens from systemic circulation.
However, their successful application was limited by their rapid lysis in blood, major uptake by the RES, and lack of availability of simple procedures for specific targeted delivery.
Encouraged by these results, the liposomes were coated with F(ab')2 fragments of a monoclonal antibody which specifically recognized the malaria-infected erythrocytes (Patent No.
[31] The monoclonal antibody bearing liposomes with encapsulated chq were found to be highly effective in the treatment of chq-resistant experimental malaria.