Dr Arwa Abugable
A postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Oxford
Dr Arwa Abugable
Dr Arwa Abugable
About
Arwa Ahmed is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. She obtained her PhD from the University of Sheffield. She graduated from the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the German University in Cairo, and later worked as a research assistant at the Genomics Center and the Center for Materials Science at Zewail City of Science and Technology. During her PhD studies, she concentrated on understanding how nuclear structural proteins enhance the repair of DNA damage caused by oxidative stress. Arwa joined SAF as an editor in 2020, and during her time she organised the Science Journalism Forum article-writing competition for 2 consecutive years, before serving as the Life Sciences Section Editor for almost 2 years. She is currently the Chief Editor in SAF.
Current research
Her current research focuses on identifying sites of DNA damage in cancer cells and how these sites influence cellular responses to different therapies. Her research output has been published in several scientific journals, including Nature, Nature Communications and Cell Reports.
Future research vision
Abugable's future research aims to further investigate the mechanisms by which DNA breaks occur in the non-coding regions of the genome and the effect of these breaks on processes such as DNA repair and transcription. This is particularly important as defects in the repair of these breaks have been implicated in various neurological disorders. Hence, investigating how these breaks are formed and repaired would pave the way for enhancing our understanding of the underlying mechanisms of neurological disorders when proteins implicated in the repair of these breaks are non-functional. This opens the door to identifying potential diagnostic biomarkers and therapeutic options for these neurological disorders.
Key publications

Ray, S*, Abugable, A* et al. A mechanism for Oxidative Damage Repair at Gene Regulator Elements. Nature, 2022.

Jurga, M et al. USP11 Controls R-Loops by Regulating Senataxin Proteostasis. Nature Communications, 2021.

Abugable, A et al. DNA Repair and Neurological Disease: From Molecular Understanding to the Development of Diagnostics and Model Organisms. DNA Repair, 2019.

Shawky, S et al. Gold Nanoparticles – an Optical Biosensor for RNA Quantification for Cancer and Neurologic Disorders Diagnosis. International Journal of Nanomedicine, 2018.

Elserafy, M et al. Rad5, HLTF, and SHPRH: A Fresh View of an Old Story. Trends in Genetics, 2018.

Key awards

The Goodger & Schorstein Awards for Post-doctoral Researchers.

The Doctoral Academy Scholarship from the Faculty of Science at the University of Sheffield.

An academic scholarship for her BSc at the German University in Cairo.

An Excellence Award from Her Highness Sheikha Fatima bint Mubarak.

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