Five-year Achievement Award for Excellence in Research and Creative Activity

Dr. S. Raza “Raz” Shaikh, associate professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and a member of the East Carolina Diabetes and Obesity Institute (ECDOI) at the Brody School of Medicine, is one of this year’s recipients of the Five-Year Achievement Award for Excellence in Research and Creative Activity.

An expert in lipid biochemistry, nutritional immunology and membrane biophysics, Shaikh earned a Ph.D. in medical biophysics from Indiana University in 2004 and completed his postdoctoral training in immunology at Johns Hopkins University in 2008. Since then, he has been establishing himself as a leader in several fields of research.

Since joining ECU, Shaikh, a specialist in the function of lipids, has received continuous extramural funding from the National Institutes of Health as well as from industry groups including pharmaceutical and dietary supplement companies.

In 2012 he received the Early Career Award from the International Society for the Study of Fatty Acids and Lipids. His first – and perhaps most often-cited – published work demonstrated the underlying mechanisms by which dietary omega-3 fatty acids target the molecular organization of lymphocyte lipid membranes to modulate inflammatory responses.

In collaboration with ECU physiology faculty member Dr. David Brown, Shaikh received a $1,250,000 grant from NIH in 2014 to investigate new ways to protect the heart during a heart attack.

During many pathological states – such as diabetes or following a heart attack – mitochondria (the “engines” of the cell) don’t “breathe” as well as they do in the healthy state, which causes lasting damage to the cells and increases the likelihood of subsequent incidents.

“If we can figure out the mechanism by which cell death occurs, we can come up with therapies to prevent cell death,” Shaikh explained.

Shaikh and Brown have collaborated often to write grants, publish papers and obtain industry funding. The pair has presented at international symposiums in 10 different countries.

Shaikh said he greatly appreciates the East Carolina award but his focus remains on solving complex problems related to obesity, immunity and diet.

His lab is currently focused on the ways in which obesity disrupts the immune system and how certain fatty acids can help the body fend off viral infections. And he is overseeing a clinical study to test the effectiveness of a specific fatty acid supplement in obese patients.

Another of Shaikh’s projects aims to establish the role that the dietary supplement SAMe plays in chronic inflammation and how that links to the supplement’s recognized ability to slow the progression of depression.

Shaikh relies heavily on social media to market the East Carolina Diabetes & Obesity Institute knowledge base and capabilities, and to establish contacts with fellow research institutions and private businesses across the state and nationwide. Those efforts have resulted in several collaborative grants with other schools including the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and University of Melbourne in Australia. Based on his collaborations, he received another NIH grant of $1,125,000 as principal investigator in 2015 for his research on dietary fatty acids, obesity, and infection.

As part of the multidisciplinary, collaborative culture at institute, Shaikh values the daily exposure he gets to a variety of disciplines. “It broadens your skill set and pushes you out of your comfort zone, which makes you more competitive,” Shaikh says. “You learn from different ways of thinking.”