CEMB Centre of Excellence in
Molecular Biology University of the Punjab

Faculty profile

Dr. Shazia Rafique

Associate Professor (TTS) Virology Lab

Molecular virologist researching hepatitis C epigenetics and therapeutic vaccine strategies against HPV-induced cervical cancer.

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Associate Professor (TTS)CEMB · University of the Punjab
$5,000PhD travel grant awards won
10Publications reported

Profile

Molecular Virologist, Cancer Vaccine Researcher and Educator

Dr. Shazia Rafique completed her PhD in Molecular Virology in 2011 at CEMB on generating infectious Hepatitis C pseudoparticles containing functional E1E2 envelope protein complexes and their neutralisation assay, under the HEC indigenous PhD programme. During her PhD she won three travel-grant awards worth $5,000 from IVI Korea, ICGEB India and NFID, USA.

She worked as a postdoctoral fellow at LUMS School of Biological Sciences for two years, researching the CG97 gene of Drosophila — a homologue of the human MLL5 gene relevant to early childhood leukaemias — and in 2014 was selected for a fully-sponsored protein purification course at Cold Spring Harbor Labs, USA.

Since joining CEMB in 2016, she has studied epigenetic control of the PDE4 gene in glucose metabolism, and her research also focuses on developing therapeutic vaccine strategies against human papillomavirus-induced cervical cancer.

Selected contributions

Science translated into capability

01

HCV pseudoparticle research

PhD generated infectious Hepatitis C pseudoparticles with functional E1E2 envelope complexes for neutralisation assays.

02

International postdoctoral training

Postdoctoral fellow at LUMS School of Biological Sciences and trained at Cold Spring Harbor Labs, USA.

03

HPV therapeutic vaccine research

Develops therapeutic vaccine strategies against HPV-induced cervical cancer.

Research output

Selected publications

A selection of publications listed on the official CEMB faculty profile.

  1. 01
    2023 · ACS Omega

    Transcriptional Analysis of TP53 Gene in Chronic Hepatitis C Patients Treated with Sofosbuvir, Daclatasvir, Pegylated Interferon, and Ribavirin

  2. 02
    2023 · Medicine

    Genotypic distribution of human papillomavirus and phylogenetic analysis of E6 and E7 gene of HR-HPV variants isolated from Pakistani population

  3. 03
    2022 · Vaccines

    An Immunoinformatics Approach to Design a Potent Multi-Epitope Vaccine against Asia-1 Genotype of Crimean-Congo Haemorrhagic Fever Virus

  4. 04
    2021 · Archives of Virology

    Next-generation sequencing studies on the E1-HVR1 region of hepatitis C virus (HCV)

  5. 05
    2020 · Journal of Viral Hepatitis

    Genome wide methylation profiling of HCV pathogenesis to develop diabetes and diabetic complications

  6. 06
    2020 · Journal of Interferon & Cytokine Research

    Peripheral Expression of CXCL10 Gene in Chronic Hepatitis C Patients Treated with Sofosbuvir, Daclatasvir, and Ribavirin

  7. 07
    2019 · Scientific Reports

    Advances in the role of HCV nonstructural protein 5a (NS5A) of 3a genotype in inducing insulin resistance

  8. 08
    2018 · Frontiers in Immunology

    Antigenic peptide prediction from E6 and E7 oncoproteins of HPV 16 and 18 for therapeutic vaccine design using immunoinformatics and MD simulation analysis

Research collaboration

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