My name is Hanaa Ahmed-Hassan a lecturer of Zoonoses, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Cairo University.
My PhD work has focused on the development of new methods for the control of avian influenza virus infection and this study was a joint supervision between University of Calgary/Canada under supervision of Dr. Faizal Careem and University of Cairo/Egypt under supervision of Dr. Maha Sabry and Dr. Eman Hamza. We studied the host pathogen relationship and how we can elicit the immune system of the chicken to face any subtype infection of avian influenza. My work has suggested that the stimulation of the innate immune response can decrease the avian influenza virus replication in ovo and in vitro. My research input translated into 7 published scientific papers (three of them as first author and the other four as co-author) that this has been done within two years only.
I had the opportunity to present the results of my work at international conferences; in 2016 and 2017, I attended the annual international conference ' CRWAD' Conference of Research Workers in Animal Diseases which was held in Chicago. In 2018, my work was presented in the Conference of American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), Denver). Also, I do present my PhD work twice in the virology and prion diseases group, U of C, Canada.
During my PhD program, I had the opportunity to supervise the research project of two summer students, 2016. I have supervised a research project of Eric Zhang (BSc-life science undergraduate student, Queens university, Kingston, Ontario, Canada) which aimed to investigate the potential activation of avian macrophages to produce type I interferon using TLR4. I also had the opportunity to supervise a research project of Ahmed Alariri (DVM student, Qassim university, Saudi Arabia) which aimed to determine the ssRNA mediated antiviral response against avian influenza virus infection in vitro. I am involved in advising the veterinary science students (University of Cairo) in their graduation projects.
From January to May 2020, I had the chance to get a training fully funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in Ohio State University, USA, under Dr. Namal supervision. During this period, I had achieved several goals. I have been trained on a very advanced Flow Cytometry machine, Cytek Aurora. This particular technology is present in very rare labs all over the world and I was very fortunate to be able to get this opportunity. The Cytek Aurora can detect 26 color in the same tube, every color encodes for a different antibody, which is specific for immune cells and cytokines. Such a technology will allow us to explore novel strategies to prevent and control zoonotic viral infections, such as HIV, through a better understanding of the innate and adaptive immune responses, in a very rapid amount of time. Shortly after my training, I could perform a couple of experiments, with very exciting preliminary data. I also performed in vitro experiment to control HIV infection and development of an adjuvant for HIV (In a BSL 2+ lab). I had the chance to be in a very good academic environment, which allowed me to make a great networking and having the ability collaborate internationally in the future. We are already planning to have common projects between Ohio state University and Cairo University.
As Dr. Namal’s lab was planning on working on SARS-COV-2 virus before the lockdown, I have engaged very thoroughly in the literature related to the new SARS-COV-2 virus. With Dr. Namal’s lab we have published our review entitled “Innate Immune Responses to Highly Pathogenic Coronaviruses and Other Significant Respiratory Viral Infections”, in Frontiers in immunology. Being the first author on this review truly gave me the opportunity to have a better look on the studies achieved in the past (SARS-COV and other viruses) and have better perspectives for what can be performed in the future in order to get a therapeutic/vaccine approach in a near future. It also helped me to develop my critical thinking and led me to write a proposal for a project on COVID-19 that is already accepted.
Throughout the course of my graduate work and my trainings, I have developed a real interest for cell biology and immunology and how we can develop new tools to battle the infectious and zoonotic diseases.