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The Possibility of Curing Diseases by Experimenting With Cell Behavior

Azam Gholami’s work with simple organisms could be key to our well-being and contribute to cancer research.

NYUAD’s Associate Professor of Physics Azam Gholami, a biophysicist, conducts research on algae that could contribute to curing cancer and provide insight into parts of the body, how they work, and how to help them heal when they don’t. 

She’s studying a form of freshwater green algae, an organism that swims in water with flagella, hair-like protrusions common in the organism, which have similar characteristics to human cells in the human brain, the airway systems, and the fallopian tubes.

For example, in the human respiratory system, cilia, hair-like protrusions on human cells, perform a whip-like movement to carry pathogens and inhaled particles out of the airways. This clearance mechanism is effective in healthy people, but patients with impaired cilia movement may develop chronic lung disease.

This demonstrates the critical importance of the cilia movement for human health. Gholami is interested in how these hair-like protrusions react to different chemicals. If the cilia and flagella change their normal behavior, what would be the way to restore the status quo?

That's why understanding the wave pattern, the dynamics of these small hair-like structures is very important for human health, because any malfunctioning of these structures has serious consequences in our body.

NYUAD Associate Professor of Physics, Azam Gholami
Figure 1. A) The green algae Chlamydomonas reinhardtii with its two hair-like protrusions called flagella. B) Flagella can be isolated from C. reinhardti. C) In the presence of the energy source ATP, the isolated flagella can be reactivated. As the flagellum moves, it forms a star-shaped pattern.

In her lab at NYUAD, Laboratory for Soft and Cellular Matter (LSCM), Gholami also studies simple cells and their movement, work that can lead to a better understanding of more complicated systems like cancer cells. Gholami is working on mapping how cells move in changing environmental conditions and how they respond to different chemicals. 

Flagellum shape during its movement.

Gholami makes this complicated work sound exciting. She said her passion for science was inspired by a high school physics teacher. Today, when she’s in the classroom, she wants to pass along her joy of physics to the students. 

“When they see a woman from Iran has done all this, it's encouraging. They can also reach this and do much better than what I did,”  Gholami said. “The students can see there is nothing wrong with women being physics scientists. If you love physics, or if you love math, that's the path to go and there is nothing to stop that.”

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