Luluel Maknun Fariha joined the School of Pharmacy at Brac University as a Lecturer in March 2022. She graduated from North South University pursuing BPharm and MPharm degrees, followed by a second master’s on Clinical Pharmacology from the University of Glasgow, UK.
During her undergraduate studies, she worked on Neuroscience, particularly depression, and anxiety as her final year research project. In this project, she investigated the anti-depressant and anxiolytic properties of Tadalafil in mice after a depressive state was induced in them by chronic unpredictable stress. Her research skills were further strengthened during her MPharm thesis project, where she had undertaken an independent project and worked on a possible treatment for dyslipidaemia in rats using orange peel extract. At UofG, she conducted independent investigative research, and performed a systematic review on Mendelian Randomization studies to establish a conclusion on causal association of serum uric acid and blood pressure. Through her research projects, she learned to develop a well-structured experiment design, to diligently follow and execute the experiment plan, the appropriate handling techniques of laboratory mice, and proper methods of brain tissue extraction for evaluation. The Distinction in both her Degree and Dissertation demonstrate her outstanding scientific writing capacities and abilities of critical appraisal of evidence to reach evidence-based conclusion.
Her research interest focuses on cardiovascular biology and disease, and its underlining key dimensions including hypertension, thrombosis, atherosclerosis, and dyslipidaemia. Going forward, she would like to work on precision medicine, and targeted therapies to personalize treatment. She wants to specialize in targeted therapies to treat cardiovascular diseases, using gene editing technologies, cell therapy, nucleic acid drugs and protein drugs. Her goal is to combine the knowledge and expertise to the advancement of basic research and helping to translate that into novel therapeutics.