Dr Mohd. Farooq Shaikh is an Associate Professor at Monash University Malaysia and leader of Neuropharmacology Research Strength in the School of Medicine and Health Sciences. He is an expert neuropharmacologist and interested in both drug discovery and understanding the disease mechanisms. His team at Monash University Malaysia has developed a zebrafish model to study the co-morbidities (secondary condition) of epilepsy. This newly developed model using the zebrafish will not only allow scientists to understand the mechanism of the disease but also will help in developing safer drugs. His team is also working on unravelling the molecular mechanisms involved in disease progression, especially the role of inflammatory biomarkers in epilepsy and other brain disorders. Utilizing again zebrafish models, his group is studying dynamics of an important inflammatory biomarker HMGB1 which has a controversial role in many neurological and non-neurological disease conditions.

He is a recipient of Monash's PVC award for Excellence in Research and Malaysian Society of Neuroscience (MSN)-best publication award in 2017. He is involved in PhD supervision and publishing papers in high impact journals. Dr Farooq completed his PhD in Pharmacology from the Institute of Chemical Technology, University of Mumbai, India, in 2012. During his PhD (2011), he was also selected by the International Brain Research Organization (IBRO) to be part of the prestigious Young Scientist Training Program for his research work in epilepsy. In 2012, he was awarded the IBRO-APRC fellowship to continue his post-doctoral studies at School of Biomedical Sciences, University of Queensland, Australia, where he worked with Dr Karin Borges on epilepsy therapy research.

Epilepsy, Post-Traumatic Epilepsy, Gut-Brain-Axis in Epilepsy associated comorbidities, Animal Models, Anticonvulsant Screening, Alzheimer’s disease, Learning & Memory

Discipline Coordinator - Pharmacology
Units taught: MED 1100/1200 and MED 2100/2200