Assistant Professor of Biochemistry
Irfana Muqbil received her degree in Biochemistry from Aligarh Muslim University, India, where she studied the effect of restraint stress on chemically induced carcinogenesis in rats and explored chemopreventive strategies, focusing on oxidative stress and DNA damage in serum and tissue samples. During her Ph.D., she received Junior and Senior Research Fellowships from the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).
She conducted postdoctoral research in the translational lab of Professor Ramzi Mohammad in the Department of Oncology at Wayne State University, focusing on targeting pathways in difficult-to-treat malignancies such as pancreatic cancer and Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Her work involved testing novel drugs targeting nuclear transport protein XPO1, contributing to improved clinical approaches for cancer treatment.
In 2017, she received a Postdoctoral Training Fellowship through an NIH-funded ReBUILD grant, teaching at the University of Detroit Mercy while continuing research at Wayne State University. She later joined the University of Detroit Mercy as an instructor, teaching upper-level chemistry courses and Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CURE) labs.
Dr. Muqbil joined Lawrence Technological University in Fall 2021, where she teaches GOB and upper-level biochemistry lecture and laboratory courses. Her current research centers on cancer biology and drug discovery with particular interest in identifying small-molecule inhibitors with therapeutic potential in cancer pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor and cancer associated cachexia. In addition to her cancer focused research, she remains committed to science communication and community engagement. She is an active advocate for STEM outreach and is the recipient of the 2024 ASBMB Science Outreach and Communication (SOC) Grant. Dr. Muqbil has published in several peer-reviewed journals and serves as a reviewer in her field.
