Ahmed Ali is a postdoctoral researcher in Leiden Academic Center for Drug Research (LACDR), Leiden university, The Netherlands. He received his bachelors with honors in Pharmaceutical Sciences from Misr International University (MIU), Egypt, and his Ph.D. in Biomedical and Health Sciences from Hiroshima University, Japan.
Dr.Ali held a double position as a Ph.D. candidate in Eiso Hiyama's group in Hiroshima University, and a full-time Research Associate in Tsutomu Masujima's group in RIKEN, Japan. During this period, he focused on investigating cellular heterogeneity by developing new single-cell analysis techniques. He showcased the diagnostic potential of single-cell metabolomics by isolating, and analyzing single circulating tumor cells from the blood of neuroblastoma cancer patients. From these single-cells,he was able to detect unique metabolites that can be used as liquid-biopsy diagnostic bio-markers in the future. He then integrated 3-D holography and tomography, micro-manipulation, and mass spectrometry to illustrate the possibility of performing quantitative analysis on cellular metabolites with sub-cellular resolution. He was also interested in studying the effect of cellular heterogeneity in drug uptake, metabolism and effect in single-cells. To this end, he developed an integrated Raman spectroscopy and Mass spectrometry analytical platform where the effect of drugs on single-cells can be measured in a noninvasive manner by Raman, followed by qualitative and quantitative analysis of the drug and its metabolite in the very same cells.
Dr. Ali is especially interested in capitalizing on his multidisciplinary experience to answer high impact problems. His current research interests are a)researching the role played by cellular heterogeneity in cancer drug resistance, b)understanding the metabolic characteristics of migratory cells that induce metastasis , and c)developing novel, robust, and sensitive single-cell metabolomics techniques. He is currently embedded in two laboratories as a postdoc, the Analytical Bio-sciences group, and The Medical Systems Biophysics and Bio-engineering group, both in Leiden Academic Center for Drug Research (LACDR), Leiden University, The Netherlands. He also a Visiting Researcher in Yoshihiro Shimizu's group, in the Bio-systems Dynamics Research Renter (BDR), RIKEN, Japan, and a Research Fellow in Misr International University Research Center (MIU-RC), Egypt.
