Abdelbasset Farahat PharmBS, MS, PhD

Dr. Abdelbasset A. Farahat, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at Mansoura University, Egypt. He received his Doctor of Philosophy from Mansoura University. His Ph.D. research focused on the design and synthesis of dicationic compounds to be used as antimalarial and antitrypanosomal agents.

In 2011, Dr. Farahat joined the Faculty of Pharmacy, Mansoura University as an Assistant Professor. In 2012 Dr. Farahat joined Boykin’s laboratory at Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA. As a Postdoctoral researcher, then research scientist and team leader. In 2018 Dr. Farahat joined Kennesaw State University as an Assistant Professor of Medicinal Chemistry. In 2018 Dr. Farahat was awarded The Encouragement State Prize in Medical Sciences from the Academy of Scientific Research and Technology, Egypt. Dr. Farahat has published 67 publications in high-impact peer-viewed journals and is an inventor of three Patents.

Dr. Farahat’s research focuses on medicinal chemistry and synthetic organic chemistry projects. My focus is primarily on targeting the DNA minor groove as an approach for antiparasitic drug discovery. This work is mostly directed toward the discovery of antimalarial, antitrypanosomal, antileishmanial, antinaeglerial, and antiacanthamoebal drugs. More recently, my research has focused on developing heterocyclic dications for DNA minor groove binding which induce topological effects, and bind into either the major or minor grooves, in specific parasitic sequences to generate a new mode of therapeutic activity. This work has led to new investigations that focus on the development of modular base pair recognition units for a variety of mixed DNA sequences. My previous work has yielded several cationic modules that recognize AT sequences quite well and are well known to enter cells and thus can potentially be developed for drugs against many diseases.