Dr. Hamidreza Montazeri Aliabadi
- Education:
- University of Tehran, Doctor of Pharmacy
University of Alberta, Ph.D.
Biography
Dr. Montazeri joined CUSP on Aug. 1st, 2014, as an assistant professor of pharmaceutics. Dr. Montazeri graduated with a Pharm.D. degree from Tehran University in 1988. He worked in industrial pharmacy for more than ten years in different capacities (including Research and Development, formulation, and Quality control), before continuing his studies.
He received his PhD in pharmaceutics (working on a project on targeted delivery of small molecule drugs to solid tumors) from the Faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Alberta (U of A), in 2007. During his graduate studies he was a teaching assistant for pharmaceutics courses, for which he was awarded Graduate Student Teaching Award in 2007 for excellence in teaching duties.
After graduation, he coordinated the pharmaceutics courses offered to undergraduate students of U of A for two semesters, before a one-year project as Research Associate working on formulation and commercialization of a micro-emulsion based on ingredients used in traditional Chinese herbal medicine. He was then awarded a Postdoctoral fellowship by Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research (now known as Alberta Innovates Health Solutions) on a project to design a polymeric carrier for siRNA delivery.
After completion of the fellowship in the Department of Chemical and Material Engineering,
U of A, Dr. Montazeri wrote a research proposal (in collaboration) for studying signaling
pathways to overcome resistance to chemotherapy in breast cancer, which was awarded
a three-year grant from Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation. Dr. Montazeri has authored
over 60 peer-reviewed publications, and three book chapters, as well as 45+ meeting
abstracts.
Research Interests
Dr. Montazeri’s research interests are: (1) to design and characterize a safe and
efficient multi-component delivery system for targeted delivery of small interfering
RNAs (siRNAs) and Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR)/
CRISPR-associated protein 9 (Cas9); (2) to study the silencing mechanism and the factors
affecting the silencing efficiency to optimize the RNA interference potential and/or
the efficiency of transfection with CRISPR/Cas9; (3) to simultaneously silence a combination
of proteins involved in signaling pathways responsible for enhanced proliferation
and survival of cancer cells, and resistance towards chemotherapy; and (4) targeting
viral protein with siRNA as an alternative approve to anti-virus therapy in respiratory
tract viral infections.
Protein silencing investigations in his lab are focused on understanding the interconnections
among the signaling pathways involved in enhanced proliferation and survival, as well
as resistance to chemotherapeutic agents in cancer cells. However, he has recently
developed nanoparticles for delivery of siRNA to prostate cancer cells and human lung
cells infected with coronavirus.
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Recent Creative, Scholarly Work and Publications
- Hamidreza Montazeri Aliabadi. Molecular Targets for Breast Cancer Therapy (Editorial). Biomolecules. 2024; 14(10): 1219.
- Ryley Hall, Abdulaziz Alasmari, Saghar Mozaffari, Parvin Mahdipoor, Keykavous Parang*, Hamidreza Montazeri Aliabadi*. Peptide/Lipid-Associated Nucleic Acids (PLANAs) as a Multicomponent siRNA Delivery System. Molecular Pharmaceutics; 2021; 18(3):986-1002.
- Hamidreza Montazeri Aliabadi, J. Totonchy, P. Mahdipoor, K. Parang, H. Uludag. Suppression of Human Coronavirus 229E Infection in Lung Fibroblast Cells via RNA Interference. Frontiers in Nanotechnology; 2021; 3:670543.
- Saghar Mozaffari, David Salehi, Parvin Mahdipoor, Richard Beuttler, Rakesh Tiwari, Hamidreza Montazeri Aliabadi*, Keykavous Parang. Design and Application of Hybrid Cyclic-Linear Peptide -Doxorubicin Conjugates as a Strategy to Overcome Doxorubicin Resistance and Toxicity. European Journal of Medicinal Chemistry; Under Review.
- Hamidreza Montazeri Aliabadi*, Remant Bahadur K.C., E. Bousoik, A. Barbarino, B. Thapa, M. Coyle, P. Mahdipoor, H. Uludag*. A Systematic Comparison of Lipopolymers for siRNA Delivery to Breast Cancer Cell Lines: In vitro studies. Acta Biomaterialia, 2020; 102: 351-66.
- E. Bousoik, R. Nabiee, F. Amirrad, A. Nichols, R. Witt, P. Mahdipoor, Hamidreza Montazeri Aliabadi*. Heterogeneity and Plasticity of Human Breast Cancer Cells in Response to Molecularly-targeted Drugs. Frontiers in Oncology, 2019; 9:1070.
- S. Mozaffari, E. Bousoik, F. Amirrad, R. Lamboy, M. Coyle, R. Hall, A. Alasmari, P. Mahdipoor, K. Parang, Hamidreza Montazeri Aliabadi*. Amphiphilic Peptides for Efficient siRNA Delivery. Polymers, 2019; 11(4): E703.
- R. Nabiee, B. Dubois, L. Green, A. Sharma, S. F. Wong, Hamidreza Montazeri Aliabadi*. In Vitro and Ex-vivo Evaluation of Topical Formulations designed to minimize transdermal absorption of Vitamin K1. PLOS ONE, 2018; 13(10): e0204531.
- J. V. Serna, Hamidreza Montazeri Aliabadi, X. Jiang, H. Uludag. siRNA/lipopolymer nanoparticles to arrest growth of chronic myeloid leukemia cells in vitro and in vivo. European Journal of Pharmaceutics and Biopharmaceutics, 2018; 130:66-70.
- M. Parmar, D. N. M. Sundaram, Remant Bahadur KC, R. Maranchuk, Hamidreza Montazeri Aliabadi, J. C. Hugh, R. Löbenberg, H. Uludag. Combinational siRNA delivery using hyaluronic acid modified amphiphilic polyplexes against cell cycle and phosphatase proteins to inhibit growth and migration of triple-negative breast cancer cells. Acta Biomaterialia, 2018; 66:294-309.
- N. S. El-Sayed, M. Sharma, Hamidreza Montazeri Aliabadi, M. G. El-Meligy, A. K. El-Zaity, Z. A. Nageib, R. K. Tiwari. Synthesis, characterization, and in vitro cytotoxicity of fatty acyl-CGKRK-chitosan oligosaccharides conjugates for siRNA delivery. International Journal of Biological Macromolecules, 2018; 112: 694-702.
- Al-Lawati, H., Hamidreza Montazeri Aliabadi, Makhmalzadeh, B.S., Lavasanifar, L. Nanomedicine for Immunosuppressive Therapy: Achievements in Pre-Clinical and Clinical Research. Expert Opinion on Drug Delivery. 2018, 15(4): 397-418.
- E. Bousoik, Hamidreza Montazeri Aliabadi*. “Do we know jack” about JAK? A closer look at JAK/STAT signaling pathway. Frontiers in Oncology, 2018; 8:287.
- H. Do, M. Sharma, N. Salem El-Sayed, P. Mahdipoor, E. Bousoik, K. Parang, Hamidreza Montazeri Aliabadi*. Difatty Acyl-Conjugated Linear and Cyclic peptides for siRNA Delivery. ACS Omega, 2017; 2(10):6939-57.
- P. Zhu, Hamidreza Montazeri Aliabadi, H. Uludag, J. Han. Identification of Potential Drug Targets in Breast Cancer Signaling Pathway using Stochastic Logical Models. Scientific Reports, 2016; 6: 23078.
- S.M. Garg, A. Falamarzian, Hamidreza Montazeri Aliabadi, M.R. Vakili, H. Uludag, A. Lavasanifar. Polymeric Micelles for siRNA Delivery to Breast Tumors: The effect of core/shell structure on in vitro and in vivo MCL-1 silencing in breast cancer. Nanomedicine, 2016; 11(17): 2319-39.
- Hamidreza Montazeri Aliabadi*, P. Mahdipoor, M. Bisoffi, H. Uludag. Changes in intracellular signaling after individual and combinational siRNA silencing in cancer cells. Molecular Pharmaceutics (Under Revision).
- M. Parmar, B. E. Arteaga Ballesteros, T. Fu, R Bahadur KC, Hamidreza Montazeri Aliabadi, J. C. Hugh, R. Löbenberg, H. Uludag. Multiple siRNA delivery against cell cycle and anti-apoptosis proteins using lipid-substituted polyethylenimine in triple-negative breast cancer and non-malignant cells. Journal of Biomedical Materials Research: Part A (Available onlibe; DOI: 10.1002/jbm.a.35846).
- M. Sharma, N. S. El-Sayed, H. Do, K. Parang, R. K. Tiwari, Hamidreza Montazeri Aliabadi*. Tumor-targeted delivery of siRNA using fatty acyl-CGKRK peptide conjugates. Acta Biomaterialia (Under Revision).