Mala Shah | |
|---|---|
| Awards | New Investigator Award (2007) |
| Academic background | |
| Education | University of Bath (BSc) University College London (PhD) |
| Thesis | The Characterisation and Pharmacology of the Slow Afterhyperpolarization in Cultured Rat Hippocampal Pyramidal Cells |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Neuroscientist |
| Institutions | University College London |
Mala Mahendra Shah (born 1975) is a British cellular and molecular neuroscientist. [1] Her research focuses on "subcellular distribution and function of neuronal voltage-gated ion channels;neural dendrite physiology;synaptic integration;ion channel pharmacology;and temporal lobe epilepsy." [2] She is the professor of neuroscience at University College London,England. [3]
Shah graduated with a BSc degree in pharmacy and pharmacology from the University of Bath,England in 1997. [4] For her PhD at the Department of Pharmacology,University College London (DPUL),she studied the characterization and pharmacology of the slow after hyperpolarization in cultured rat hippocampal pyramidal cells under the expert supervision of Dennis Haylett. [5] [6]
In 2001,she was awarded the Wellcome International Prize Travel Research Fellowship by Wellcome Trust to join Daniel Johnston's laboratory at the Baylor College of Medicine (Texas,USA) where she worked as a postdoctoral research associate to understand ion channel properties and function in entorhinal cortical dendrites under physiologic and epileptic conditions. She returned to DPUL in 2004 as a senior research fellow in David Brown's laboratory to continue her research,funded by the Wellcome Trust and Epilepsy Research Foundation,on the functional significance of subcellular distribution of ion channels in hippocampal and cortical neurons during normal and epileptogenic conditions. [7] [4] [8]
After winning the Medical Research Council (MRC) New Investigator Award in 2007,Shah was appointed as a lecturer at the UCL School of Pharmacy (UCL SP). She was promoted to a reader in 2011. [6] [4] From 2015–20,she directed the Master of Research (MRes) programme at UCL SP. She is currently the professor of neuroscience at PDUL. [3]
Shah received £362,880 as part of her 2007 New Investigator Award from the Medical Research Council (MRC) to study the possible molecular mechanisms responsible for hyperpolarization-activated cyclic nucleotide (HCN) downregulation in entorhinal cortex (EC) neurones during the latent period that occurs between the precipitating insult (e.g. head injury) and the onset of spontaneous seizures or chronic temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). She used animal models and biochemical methods to investigate if a decrease in calcium/calmodulin dependent kinase (CaMKII) expression causes hyperpolarization-activated cation current (lh) downregulation. Through this research (2008–2011),Shah aimed to highlight the significance of Ih plasticity during the latent period,understand the mechanisms that may initiate the TLE process,and identify novel treatment strategies. [9]
A UCL SP research team comprising Shah and Frances Stephenson received a £644,956 grant from Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) for a 2013–17 project on the regulation and impact of TRAK-mediated neuronal mitochondrial trafficking mechanisms. [10] [11] [12] They used electrophysiological recordings and photon imaging of adult rodent brain slices to investigate where neuronal network activity is retained in the brain and determine the importance of synaptic transmission and dendritic information processing. Biochemical techniques and live imaging of hippocampal neurons were employed to understand "whether the post-translational modification of the complex regulates protein-protein interactions that determine formation or dissociation and thereby mitochondrial transport." Given that the aberrant distribution of mitochondria is a feature of debilitating neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's,Shah and Stephenson set out to test the hypothesis that defects in mitochondrial transport might be a contributing or causative factor to disease processes. [10]
In 2022,a research team comprising Shah,Joseph Nicolazzo (Monash University,Melbourne,Australia),and Raymond Norton (Monash University) received funding from PharmAlliance Research Domain,as part if their new PharmAlliance Research Clusters for Doctoral Training (PARCDT) funding scheme,for the development of blood-brain barrier-targeted peptide therapeutics for neurological and neurodegenerative diseases. [13]
Shah was the co-investigator on two MRC-funded projects between 2022–25 and 2025–29 respectively:how loss of UNC13A,a protein-coded gene,exacerbates amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and the development of new therapies for ALS/frontotemporal dementia (FTD) through the dissection of early dysregulation of neuronal output in humans. [14] [12]
Shah is a member of The Physiological Society UK,British Neuroscience Association and The American Society for Neuroscience. She served on the editorial board of British Journal of Pharmacology from 2021 to 2025,Journal of Biological Chemistry from 2012 to 2022,and Pflügers Archiv European Journal of Physiology from 2010 to 2013. Since 2010,She has been the review editor of Frontiers in Pharmacology of Ion Channels and Channelopathies and Frontiers for Membrane Physiology and Biophysics since 2010 and 2011 respectively. [7]