By Yamen Nubani

JENIN, Sunday, February 17, 2019 (WAFA) – Palestinian neurologist Thabat Marwan Khatib, 27, is ostensibly the first neurological researcher to patent the development of brand new pharmaceutical combinations that affect the neurons and improve their performance in many ways. These combinations, she says, may be a good remedy to various neurological diseases, especially Alzheimer‘s disease.

“I began to discover these combinations by noting that the elderly and people with Alzheimer‘s disease are experiencing a shortage in a chemical called “retinoic acid” and dysfunction in its work and production in the body,” Khatib told WAFA.

Therefore, she adds, “I was able to develop similar, more powerful and more effective pharmaceutical combinations similar to retinoic acid. These combinations are still under examination in the laboratory to see how long their effects are.”

Khatib said the preliminary results obtained from the laboratory-cultured neurons are excellent and promising, “and I hope that these combinations will move to the next stage of human clinical trials.”

“If everything goes as expected without any difficulties, the pharmaceutical combinations will be manufactured and distributed to the market in the form of medications. The process is expected to last for several years.”

Khatib, who comes from the city of Jenin in the occupied West Bank, completed her PhD degree in applied neuroscience with distinction from the University of Aberdeen, UK in March 2018. Prior to this, she completed a Master’s of Life Sciences in 2014 with a focus on cancer research from the Graduate School at Najah National University in Palestine.

Her doctoral thesis studies the brain and nerve cells and the way they work in the normal state, as well as the changes that occur in the brain during neurological diseases. The thesis then moves to apply this knowledge by using different techniques to find treatments for patients with neurological diseases.

Khatib started working as a researcher in a post-doctoral fellowship program in the Department of Applied Neuroscience at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Aberdeen, UK, from April 2018.

“Although I wishes to become a doctor, when I grew up I decided to change my style of study to become a researcher studying the brain, nerves and diseases that could infect them in the laboratory, as well as a lecturer in medical schools to convey to new generations of doctors new knowledge and the latest science, effort,” she concludes.

M.N