Profile: Dr Anil Mehta

Earlier this year, the University announced a major breakthrough in the area of cystic fibrosis research - a University of Dundee-led team of scientists had uncovered key links between CF and a protein that controls a range of other diseases including cancer, diabetes and obesity.

It is not surprising that such a breakthrough has come from Dundee. For the past 14 years the University has hosted and maintained the Scottish, now UK (since 1999), Cystic Fibrosis Database, which is soon to be extended across Europe and will link to the American equivalent, creating the first truly global CF database.

In September next year the University will host a key international conference on the discovery of this protein, which links cancer to cystic fibrosis and diabetes. The conference is being organised by University academic Dr Anil Mehta. Dr Mehta is also credited with setting up the CF database in 1992 and it is he who led research into the recent breakthrough.

JOB TITLE:
Reader in Child Health and Honorary Consultant Paediatrician

UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT:
Maternal and Child Health Sciences (School of Medicine)

ACADEMIC BACKGROUND:
I had read undergraduate physics, mathematics and engineering but switched before completing my degree to read medicine and worked in bioengineering (1975-1985). I then retrained in Biochemistry (1989) and cell signalling. I came to Dundee in 1991 as a lecturer.

SUM UP AREA OF RESEARCH:
My research involves integration of the biochemistry and epidemiology of the inherited disease cystic fibrosis. The biochemistry side of research enables us to create and test new molecular hypotheses related to the disease. The epidemiology is made possible by the UK Cystic Fibrosis Database, which was built by my team and is soon to be expanded across the whole of the EU.

GREATEST ACHIEVEMENT/BREAKTHROUGH IN RESEARCH:
We have discovered that a cellular protein called NDPK, which is known to be involved in the spread of cancers and insulin-release mechanisms in diabetes, is defective in cystic fibrosis. Importantly, CF patients also have a higher incidence of small bowel cancer and diabetes than the normal population.

We discovered a new link between NDPK and an enzyme involved in fat metabolism called AMPK, which we call the "fat controller" (AMPK was discovered by another Dundee academic, Professor Grahame Hardie). In CF, this link is broken and the result is an inability to regulate the breakdown and synthesis of fat. Additional research from my team found that these enzymes also bind to a protein that causes cystic fibrosis, CFTR.

GOALS FOR THE FUTURE
By the end of today another cystic fibrosis patient will have died prematurely. We must find out why the link between NDPK, AMPK and the fat controller is broken down in cystic fibrosis so that we can then go on to develop a treatment.

Also, since cystic fibrosis patients have very little fat which we believe is the result of the disrupted link between NDPK and the fat controller, there is potential to use this knowledge in research into obesity treatments.

WOULD YOU LIKE TO COLLABORATE WITH RESEARCHERS IN ANOTHER FIELD?
Due to our recent discoveries I am very keen to work with scientists in the area of cancer research. I am organising the seventh international meeting on NDPK and all its functions in Dundee from 2-6 September 2007. Professor Sir David Lane and Professor Grahame Hardie will both present key note lectures at the meeting and I hope that many colleagues from a variety of backgrounds to register to help us move from bench to bedside.

DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEAS FOR COLLABORATIVE PROJECTS?
Yes. I have benefited from collaborations in Life Sciences. To fully understand the implications of what we have found I have also set up Visiting Professorships at Regensburg in Germany to study the AMPK-CFTR link, at Stony Brook, New York to study CFTR and lung development, and at Lisbon in Portugal to study CFTR and cellular protein maturation.

IF YOU COULD CHOOSE ONE THING THAT WOULD POSITIVELY IMPACT YOUR RESEARCH/WORK ENVIRONMENT/JOB SATISFACTION, WHAT WOULD IT BE?
Environment. I have lived in Oxford, Cambridge and London. Dundee really is much better.

From a developmental biology perspective, the NDPK field needs a Zebra Fish collaborator. If you are one of those, please get in touch. We have great reagents! But seriously, many biochemical roads meet at NDPK - we will have fun over the next fifteen years, I will then retire and go back and finish my physics degree.

IF YOU WEREN'T IN THIS JOB, WHAT WOULD YOU BE DOING?
Trying to explain to those working in the physics of superconductivity that they must look at how the electron transport chain in the mitochondrion acts as a biological superconductor, as a complementary approach to electron pairing. My view is, why not take a look at how Nature does it?