Abdulmalik Laboratory

Research in the Abdulmalik Laboratory focuses on the development of novel therapies for the hemoglobinopathies, with a particular emphasis on developing and validating novel therapeutic agents for sickle cell disease (SCD).

Specifically, a major part of the lab’s research focuses on the design, development, and investigation of small molecules targeting sickle hemoglobin and disrupting the polymerization that underlays the primary pathophysiology of SCD. The lab maintains ongoing, highly productive drug-development collaborations with an array of academic investigators as well as industry to investigate small molecules that can potentially benefit patients with SCD.

The lab team also investigates and optimizes non-pharmacologic therapeutic approaches for SCD and beta-thalassemia, and they study transgenes that encode stability-enhanced β-globin mRNA for β-hemoglobinopathies. The Abdulmalik Laboratory made important progress in designing and investigating potential therapeutic transgenes with enhanced mRNA stability, some of which are being validated in various test systems.

Finally, the lab collaborates on the development of invertebrate hemoglobins as novel, safe, and ultra-stable blood substitutes.