An International Medical University (IMU) lecturer, Dr Mayuren Candasamy together with his research team comprising of pharmacologists, molecular biologists and pathologist, recently secured a Fundamental Research Grant Scheme (FRGS) research grant fund of RM 135,000 under Phase 2/2014 for a research project on diabetes.
Through this project, the team aims to focus on the ability of an antioxidant to protect the β cells and its role in improving insulin signalling. The project also provides opportunities for PhD and MSc students to perform their research.
The team will be focusing on areas related to diabetes as this is a major threat globally. According to the International Diabetes Federation, there were 1.9 million diabetic cases in the year 2013 in Malaysia. Oxidative stress plays a major role in the pathogenesis of type 2 diabetes, contributing to impairment of insulin action through inhibition of insulin signalling pathways, as well as promoting loss of β-cells in the pancreatic islets, leading to progressive failure of insulin secretion. Antioxidants have been reported to ameliorate experimental diabetes mellitus and a small number of studies support a clinically beneficial effect in humans, although other studies have shown no effect. Dr Mayuren Candasamy has been a lecturer of the Division of Life Sciences, School of Pharmacy since 2012. He acquired his BPharm, MPharm and PhD from India. He specialised in pharmacology and has served as an academician since 2005. He has focused on research since then and his areas of interest includes diabetes, cardio metabolic disorders, drug interaction and pharmacokinetic studies. Dr Mayuren has 29 publications to date. He has experienced working with animal models in his projects. He has been the co-investigator for a project under the Research Promotion Scheme funded by AICTE, India in 2011 securing a grant of INR 15,00,000. He has also worked as a co-supervisor for UGC projects.
Dr Mayuren is involved in teaching several modules spread across many undergraduate and MSc in Molecular Medicine programme at IMU. He has supervised several undergraduate and postgraduate projects as a principal investigator and co-supervisor since the beginning of his career and is more focused on supervising Bachelor of Pharmacy (BPharm), BSc in Biomedical Science, Bachelor of Medical Sciences and MSc students on their research projects at IMU.
His BPharm Semester 7 research students had the opportunity to perform their research in the University of Strathclyde in collaboration with Dr Susan Currie focusing on cardiac hypertrophy since 2013. Their work was presented as a poster in the DDTWC 2014, held at Boston. Prof Brian L Furman from University of Strathclyde is well associated as an advisor for his projects on diabetes. He has assisted PhD students in their research work associated with activities using animals.
