Aftab Ahmad's Biography

Aftab Ahmad, Associate Professor of Anesthesiology, Division of Molecular and Translational Biomedicine, University of Alabama at Birmingham

Dr. Aftab Ahmad’s interest is in identifying and understanding the role of circulating factors in lung injury, repair and development. His current focus is on identifying pathways by which toxic chemicals cause lung injury and has found that exposure to aerosolized chemicals cause release of extracellular RNA leading to lung injury. He is investigating mechanisms by which extracellular RNA influences injury. He is also testing nucleic acid scavenging therapies that can mitigate/rescue from mortality resulting from toxic chemical exposures. He is currently funded through the NIH’s CounterACT program, which is a translational research program aimed at the discovery and/or identification of better therapeutic medical countermeasures and technologies against chemical threat agents.