Saed’s Lab Collaborators

Professor and Division Director Gynecologic Oncology
Karmanos Cancer Institute

Dr. Morris is currently Professor and Director of Gynecologic Oncology at the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute, Wayne State University School of Medicine. He has known Dr. Saed since he joined Wayne State University, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology in 1998. He has collaborated with Dr. Saed on several research projects on ovarian cancer that have led to several joint publications. He is interested in the identification of new agents to kill ovarian cancer cells, which would be an important contribution to the current arsenal of drugs used to treat ovarian cancer. Additionally, he is a key person in providing specimens from various stages of ovarian cancer as well as provide clinical perspective.

Professor, Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology
Associate Dean for Research, Medical College of Georgia
Senior Vice President for Research, Augusta University
Leon Henri Charbonnier Endowed Chair in Reproductive Endocrinology

Dr. Diamond has worked with Dr. Saed for over two decades, with over a hundred joint publications, primarily related to ovarian cancer and postoperative adhesion development. He has been an ongoing participant in the efforts that have resulted in the novel, striking preliminary data of the genotypic switch in chemoresistant ovarian cancer cells, as well as assisted in the development of this grant submission, including the clinical trial protocol described in the proposal.

Associate Professor, Wayne State University

Dr. Abu-Soud’s research interests include understanding the role of free radicals and oxidant stress in the pathogenesis of infertility and other inflammatory disorders, the biochemistry of nitric oxide synthases (NOS) and leukocyte peroxidases, free radicals and reactive oxygen species (ROS) and their mechanisms of oxidative damage, and the biochemistry of antioxidants.

Dr. Abu-Soud studies nitric oxide (NO) biosynthesis in mammalian systems. This biological system is currently considered to play a pivotal role in regulation of cellular function and communication. Specific biological systems where this pathway participates include signal transduction in the brain, stroke, control of blood pressure and heart rate, gastric motility, and immunologic destruction of tumor cells and microbes. His main interests involve investigating enzyme reaction mechanisms, understanding the enzyme structure-function relationship, learning how other cellular proteins can control NOS activity and the cell biology of NO as it relates to gene expression and protein modification. Several years ago, his laboratory was recognized for identifying that myeloperoxidasem (MPO) has the remarkable catalytic activity of oxidatively consuming NO as a substrate under physiological conditions, suggesting that this enzyme may play a role in the pathogenesis of endothelial dysfunction. During the last six years, he has designed a kinetic approach to test the hypothesis that NO plays an important role in modulating MPO catalytic activity and function. Recently, he has shown that MPO-hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) system may function as a source of free iron under conditions of oxidative stress. He has also shown that hypochlorous acid (HOCl), the final product of MPO, induced heme destruction from hemoprotein as a novel mechanism of free iron release and tissue injury in inflammatory diseases. These findings may significantly contribute to new understandings of inflammation in numerous chronic disorders, such as wide variety of cancer, infertility, lung diseases, and cardiovascular diseases such as atherosclerosis. He also identified the mechanism through which dietary supplements such as lycopene, tryptophan and melatonin inhibit MPO and eliminate its final oxidative product, HOCl. More recently, he has pioneered two novel models in which these mechanisms can be explored, to elucidate the critical interplay of MPO and inducible NOS (iNOS). The first, he has pioneered evaluation the effect of ROS and reactive nitrogen species on oocyte quality. In the second, in collaboration with Dr. Ghassan Saed, has demonstrated that both iNOS and MPO are co-localized in both adhesion and normal fibroblasts as well as in ovarian cancer cells. Drs. Abu-Soud and Saed have collaborated and intensively published together in the past.