Dr. Farrukh Aqil, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Medicine at the James Graham Brown Cancer Center, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, USA. He received his doctorate in Microbiology from Aligarh Muslim University, India and has extensive experience of more than 12 years in phytochemistry, microbiology and cancer prevention. Dr. Aqil’s research focus is on biological activities of Indian medicinal plants against MDR bacteria, antioxidants, and the antimutagenicity potential of bioactive plant extracts. He has also focused on cancer chemoprevention and treatment primarily of breast, lung and ovarian cancers using both standard chemotherapeutic drugs and agents of natural origin like spices, berries and berry bioactives. In the last few years his focus has been on antioxidant, antimutagenic and anticancer properties of phytocompounds, and to evaluate the effectiveness of berry bioactives and withaferin A against lung and ovarian cancer in cell culture and animal models as well as identify potential molecular targets.

Dr. Aqil’s group is developing novel combinatorial approaches for the prevention and treatment of lung and ovarian cancer by testing natural agents and standard chemo drugs using drug-sensitive and drug-resistant cancer cells. More recently, his lab has developed the slow release device “polymeric implants” for continuous systemic and local delivery of drugs, a technology which has fetched several national and international patents.

Dr. Aqil has authored or co-authored over 50 articles in peer-reviewed journals, 13 book chapters and has edited 4 books. He has participated in many conferences and presented his work as 70 abstracts/oral presentations. He serves as peer reviewer for more than 30 journals.

Dr. Aqil is currently studying the role of naturally occurring nanoparticles “Exosomes” as drug delivery vehicle. This field is the most recent in cancer research and can make a paradigm change in the delivery of natural compounds as preventive and therapeutics. He utilizes several cell culture, and rodent models to test efficacy of plant-derived natural compounds and studies their potential mechanism of action.