Dr. Abrar Ahmed works as an Assistant Professor at Punjab University College of Pharmacy, University of the Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan (November 2018-Present). He earned his Ph.D. degree in Pharmacognosy from Sun YatSen University, Guangzhou, China in 2018 and holds a distinction in reporting a novel skeleton of 2,3-seco pleiocarpamine type alkaloid possessing cyano group (Secopleiocarpamine A). Later, during his postdoctoral fellowship under the prestigious, Johan Gadolin International Scholarship Award at Laboratory of Molecular Science and Engineering, Åbo Akademi University, Finland (Feb 2020- Feb 2021), Abrar successfully isolated natural stilbenes as lead inhibitors of TRPV1 for the attenuation of pain and inflammation, playing his due part in drug discovery research.
During his first year of stay at Punjab University College of Pharmacy, Dr. Abrar earned an SRGP research grant of 0.5 million PKR under the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan for a project entitled ‘Extraction, Isolation, and Characterization of Natural Alkaloids from Apocynaceae: Probing Pharmacoinformatics Guided Anti-Malarial Potential’. While his research expertise includes multiple chromatographic and analytical techniques including HPLC, UV, IR, NMR (1D, 2D), HRES1-MS, GCMS, and LCMS, his current focus revolves around computational drug discovery, in the development and application of in-silico methods for characterizing novel drug target-binding affinity molecules by integrating directed molecular selection, ligand design, and structure-activity relationships for early drug discovery. This is done using his prowess in operating highly efficient computational programs including Pymol, Modeller with Maestro and Desmond from the Schrödinger software package.
Being committed to his field of work, Abrar has published over 30 SCI, ISI indexed research publications in well reputed international journals with one patent. He is currently working over 13 other research projects in the pipeline, meanwhile supervising 6 doctoral and 07 master students. His scholarly work has been published in leading journals including Fitoterapia, Natural Product Research, Marine Drugs, Organic Chemistry Frontiers, Phytochemistry Letters, Arabian Journal of Chemistry, Current Issues in Molecular Biology (CIMB), Cell Biochemistry, Structure and Function, Frontiers in Pharmacology, The FSEB journal, Journal of Biomolecular Structure and Dynamics, Journal of Ethnopharmacology, Journal of Drug Delivery Science and Technology,
Pakistan Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Holzforchung, RSC advances and many others with a stellar research impact factor of over 100 accredited to his contributions to the world of drug discovery. Additionally, Dr. Abrar also holds the privilege to be the Editor of the Pakistan Journal of Pharmacy (2018- Present) and a reviewer of multiple internationally acclaimed journals by the Nature, Springer, Francis and Tylor, and MDPI publishers. He always welcomes students from different areas of Pharmaceutical Sciences to work with him as visiting researchers and research assistants. Outside of his professional life, Dr. Abrar enjoys hiking, traveling, and reading books. One of his favorite authors is Mitch Albom, and he particularly appreciates the book Tuesdays with Morrie and a Stranger in the Lifeboat.