Masmudur Rahman

Masmudur Rahman is a molecular virologist and assistant professor in the Biodesign Center for Personalized Diagnostics and the School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University.

Masmudur Rahman and his research team investigate how innate and intrinsic host factors and signaling pathways regulate virus infection in normal/healthy and transformed/cancer cells; and how virus-encoded proteins counteract these cellular factors and signaling pathways. This research is particularly significant for cancer cells where the innate immune responses are mostly nonfunctional due to cellular transformation and rely heavily on intrinsic factors to restrict viruses and other pathogens. Due to this loss of innate immune responses and sensing pathways, cancer cells are sensitive to oncolytic viruses that can selectively kill cancer cells, sparing the normal cells. His lab studies one specific oncolytic virus, myxoma virus (MYXV), a member of the poxvirus, to treat various types of cancers using preclinical animal models. His research combines traditional virology techniques, genetic engineering, microscopy (including confocal and transmission electron microscopy), molecular and cellular biology techniques, proteomics, transcriptomics, gene silencing, bioinformatics, and animal (mouse and rabbits) models.  

Masmudur received his bachelor’s and master’s (thesis) degrees from the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh, and his doctorate from the Department of Microbiology and Cell Biology at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, India. His postdoctoral research training was in the laboratory of Dr. Grant McFadden at the Roberts Research Institute, University of Western Ontario, Canada, and the University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, where he studied how poxviruses modulate the cellular innate and intrinsic immune responses.