Dr Zahra Hasan
About me
Zahra Hasan is the Gulamali Hirji endowed Professor at Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Aga Khan University. She is a Consultant at Section of Molecular Pathology, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, and Director of the Faculty of Health Sciences PhD Program. She has a PhD from Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, UK. She is a past President, Association of Molecular Pathology Pakistan, serves on research panels for HEC.
At the Clinical Laboratories, she works to enhance capacity for molecular diagnostics including those related to, infectious diseases, molecular oncology, immunology, clinical genetics and genomics. She believes that building research capacity in basic sciences is key to understanding locally prevalent infectious diseases particularly in the context of host genetics and genome-based diagnostics.
Her research has focused on both pathogen and host aspects of disease, with a particular interest in identifying biomarkers associated with protection from disease as well as biomarkers of disease severity. She has worked in the context of genomic surveillance through the pandemic and also on key studies evaluating COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness in the population.
Other Memberships/Affiliations
Degrees:
1. Ghanchi NK, Nasir A, Masood KI, Abidi SH, Mahmood SF, Kanji A, et al. Higher entropy observed in SAR-CoV-2 genomes from the first COVID-19 wave in Pakistan PLoS ONE. 2021;16(8)(e0256451):https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0256451.
2. Mushtaq MZ, Shakoor S, Kanji A, Shaheen N, Nasir A, Ansar Z, et al. Discrepancy between PCR based SARS-CoV-2 tests suggests the need to re-evaluate diagnostic assays. BMC Res Notes. 2021;14(1):316.
3. Sarfraz A, Hasan Siddiqui S, Iqbal J, Ali SA, Hasan Z, Sarfraz Z, et al. COVID-19 age-dependent immunology and clinical outcomes: implications for vaccines. J Dev Orig Health Dis. 2021:1-7.
4. Abidi SH, Imtiaz K, Kanji A, Qaiser S, Khan E, Iqbal K, et al. A rapid real-time polymerase chain reaction-based live virus microneutralization assay for detection of neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 in blood/serum. PLoS One. 2021;16(12):e0259551.
5. Masood KI, Yameen M, Ashraf J, Shahid S, Mahmood SF, Nasir A, et al. Upregulated type I interferon responses in asymptomatic COVID-19 infection are associated with improved clinical outcome. Sci Rep. 2021;11(1):22958.
6. A Nasir, AR Bukhari, NS. Trovão, PM Thielen, A Kanji, SF Mahmood, NK Ghanchi, Z Ansar, B Merritt, T Mehoke, SA Razzak, MA Syed, SR Shaikh, M Wassan, UBr Aamir, G Baele, Z Rasmussen, D Spiro, R Hasan and Z Hasan. Introduction of SARS-CoV-2 variant B.1.1.7 in Pakistan through travelers arriving from UK. Virus Evolution. 2022, 8(1), 1–9
7.