Tamer Nasr
Professor
tamer.nasr@ejust.edu.eg
Personal Info
00201033407725
Medicinal Chemistry
Professor Tamer Mohamed Nasr (H-index 17) is in an Egyptian national mission since February 2nd, 2025, to work as a Professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the Faculty of Pharmacy, Egypt-Japan University of Science and Technology (E-JUST). He works as a professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the Faculty of Pharmacy, Helwan University from October 2020.
He was born in Cairo in 1976. He graduated from the Faculty of Pharmacy, Helwan University in 1999. Then, he earned his master’s degree in the field of Pharmaceutical Chemistry in 2004 from Helwan University. Later, he obtained his Ph.D. degree in Chemo-Pharmaceutical Sciences from the Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Science at Kyushu University (Japan, 2009). During his Ph.D. he synthesized some nucleoside analogues for the purpose of forming stable triple helix DNA. Additionally, he synthesized the nucleoside analogue 8-OxoG-clamp for the purpose of detecting mutations such as 8-oxodeoxyguanosine in ODN. Post his doctorate; he joined Helwan University as an Assistant Professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry. Then, he moved to Saudi Arabia to work as an Assistant Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at King Khalid University (KKU). In 2013/2014 he was the acting head of the Pharmaceutical Chemistry Department at KKU. In June 2014 he came back to Helwan University. In 2015, he was promoted to Associate Professor of Pharmaceutical at the Faculty of Pharmacy, Helwan University. In 2017, he had sabbatical leave from Helwan University and worked as the acting head of the Pharmaceutical Chemistry Department at the Modern University for Technology and Information (MTI). In 2020 he was promoted to Full Professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at Helwan University during and continued his sabbatical leave to work as the head of the Pharmaceutical Chemistry Department at the Faculty of Pharmacy, MTI University from November 2020 till End of January 2025. Currently, he was moved to work at the Faculty of Pharmacy, Egypt-Japan University of Science and Technology, Egypt as a National Mission since February 2nd, 2025. He supervises many master and Ph.D. students and has a total number of 47 papers published in impacted international journals. Recently he was interested in the design, synthesis and biological evaluation of small heterocyclic molecules as anticancer, antiviral or antimicrobial agents. A complete list of his publications is available in this link: https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=5daHatIAAAAJ
I started my research by doing my master thesis, from 2001 to 2004, in the field of medicinal chemistry by synthesizing three different series of thioglycosides as possible anticancer agents. I synthesized thienopyrazole thioglycosides and thiophene thioglycosides. These compounds were published in the Journal of Carbohydrate Chemistry. Additionally, I succeed to publish a direct route for the synthesis of a new class of acrylamide thioglycosides derivatives in the Journal of Carbohydrate Chemistry. My success during my master increased the passion to pursue my research in the field of carbohydrate chemistry during PhD. I succeeded to get a scholarship to study my PhD in Japan. I Joined the research group of Prof. Shigeki Sasaki at the Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Kyushu University, Japan. My thesis was on the synthesis of 1’-phenyl substituted nucleoside analogs and evaluation of their properties for the duplex and the triplex DNA formation. Unfortunately, the 1’-phenyl substituted nucleoside analogs of the 2’-deoxyribose were extremely unstable in acetic acid medium so couldn’t be incorporated in artificial DNA. Therefore, I decided to synthesize 1’-phenyl substituted carbocyclic nucleoside analogs by replacing the 2’-deoxyribose unit by carbocyclic sugar moiety. Asymmetric synthesis was used, and I obtained the target compounds in quantity and high purity. I succeeded to incorporate them into oligodeoxynucleotides for evaluation of triplex DNA formation. This work was published in Heterocycles and Nucleosides, Nucleotides and Nucleic Acids Journals. Moreover, I participated in another project for the detection of mutation in DNA by synthesizing specific nucleoside analogue and incorporating it in specified sequence of ODN. This work was published under the title ‘’Selective fluorescence quenching of the 8-oxoG-clamp by 8-oxodeoxyguanosine in ODN’’.
After PhD I was interested to focus my research on:
- Finding active compounds against pathogenic bacterial strains. I succeeded to get research grant from the Deanship of Scientific Research (Project No.KKU-SCII-092), King Khalid University, Ministry of Higher Education, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (2012). This research grant helped me to synthesize a series of 2-(3-pyridyl)-4,5-disubstituted thiazoles that showed potent antimicrobial activities and published in European Journal of Medicinal Chemistry and one of these compounds showed high activity against multidrug-resistant bacterial strains and the results were published in Microbial Pathogenesis and Anerobe journals. Also, I was interested to improve the antimicrobial activities of sulfizoxazole by modifying the structure and was able to publish three papers from this project in European Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, Journal of Enzyme Inhibition and Medicinal Chemistry and Bioorganic & Medicinal Chemistry. In the last paper radiolabeling techniques were used to study the pharmacokinetic properties of the most active compound.
- Designing compounds with high activity and selectivity against cancer cells. I had more than 10 papers in this area. Among the targeted enzymes/proteins were Pim-1 kinase, VEGFR2 and peptidyl-prolyl isomerase Pin1. Microarray studies were applied in three papers to determine the possible mechanism of action of the most active compounds. And in one paper the radiolabelling techniques were used to study the in vivo pharmacokinetic properties of the most active compound.
- Designing antidiabetic compounds as potent dipeptidyl peptidase IV inhibitors.
Currently I’m working on:
- Application for Satreps Research Fund from JICA Japan in collaboration with three different Japanese Universities for sustainable development and the research team will incorporate researchers from Helwan University, National Research Centre and E-JUST.
- A project for synthesizing non-nucleoside derivatives, quinazoline derivatives, that targets NS5B enzyme as a possible treatment for chronic hepatitis C virus in collaboration with Prof. Khalid abouzaid from Ain Shams University and Prof. Grigris Zoidis from National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.
- Synthesizing different prodrugs and alkylated derivatives from Niclosamide to evaluate their anticancer, antiviral and antimicrobial activities.
- Synthesizing different chromone and quinoline derivatives as possible anticancer agents.
In the coming few years I will focus on the following:
1. Use of nano chemistry to increase the selectivity and potency of anticancer compounds.
2. Collaborate with researchers from Radioactive Isotopes and Generators Department, Hot Laboratories Centre, Atomic Energy Authority to produce potent radiopharmaceutical drugs.
3. Synthesizing peptide derivatives that could be used for the treatment of cancer.
4. Design and synthesis of nucleoside analogs as antiviral agents.
5. Collaborate with the pharmaceutical industry to solve their problems.
6. Try to get patents
7. Apply to the funding institutions to get more funds to my research projects.
8. Collaborate with other research institutions either in Egypt or internationally.
