Muhammad N. Aslam, MBBS, MD University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA

Biography: Dr. Aslam received his Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) at the University of Punjab (Pakistan). Dr. Aslam, after training as a physician in Pakistan, moved to the United States of America where he started his research career with his postdoctoral work at the University of Michigan, which was mainly in the area of colon cancer chemoprevention. He is currently working at the Department of Pathology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and is a part of the cancer chemoprevention group.

Research Interests: Dr. Aslam’s research career started with the exploration of the role of different natural products in skin repair and wound healing. He also noted that the efforts to understand growth regulation in the skin could be applied to the colon. To validate this theory, extensive ex vivo and in vivo work was conducted to determine the effects of calcium and trace minerals from calcium rich-marine red algae. Subsequently, Dr. Aslam’s research focus switched to interrogate the role of calcium, other cationic trace elements and the extracellular calcium-sensing receptor in colon epithelial cell growth control in the context of colon cancer chemoprevention. Dr. Aslam began a series of long-term dietary intervention studies for a reduction in colon polyp formation in healthy (genetically normal) mice. The overall hypothesis of these studies was that a multi-mineral approach is more effective in modulating growth and inducing differentiation in the human colonic epithelium than calcium alone. Dr. Aslam has recently finished a phase I clinical trial testing the same hypothesis in human subjects at risk for colorectal cancer. He is also involved in collaborative efforts to explore a rapid scanning laser-emission microscopy to detect abnormal changes in cell nuclei for early diagnosis of cancerous tissue.