Iranian American Medical Association (IAMA) Javaan is pleased to highlight a professional success of Elahe Mahdavian, Ph.D., Associate Professor at Louisiana State University in Shreveport, Department of Chemistry and Physics.  Dr. Mahdavian Obtained her Master degree from Sharrif University of Technology in Tehran and her Ph.D. from University of South Carolina, USA.  Dr. Mahdavian’s research group at LSU-Shreveport was recently awarded with a $1.34 million grant from National Institutes of Health (INBRE program) to work on a natural compound, Fusarochromanone (FC101) known to have anti-cancer activity.

Dr. Mahdavian is a medicinal chemist and has expertise in the synthesis of flavonoids and the derivatization of chroman compounds, and she is working together with Drs. Salvatore and Williams-Hart (LSU-Shreveport) and Drs. Clifford and Kevil (LSU Health Sciences Center) to develop more potent analogs of FC101 and to evaluate the mechanism of this compound’s biological Function.

The primary goal of this research is to develop novel anti-cancer agents based on FC101, a natural mycotoxin with potent anti-angiogenic and direct anti-tumor activity. Generally, cancer growth increases with a blood supply; if the supply is cut off, then the body can fight the cancer growth and metastasis.

"Once we have a compound worth testing, we have to rely on our collaborators in the medical school for the biological testing," said Dr. Mahdavian.  Dr. Mahdavian’s group hypothesized that most human cancers would be impacted by this compound.  However, cancers with no treatable mass, like leukemia, probably would not.

The compound will be used as a base, where several different structural analogs will be synthesized.  These analogs will be given to Dr. Mahdavian’s collegues at LSU Health Science Center for testing on several human cancer cell lines. If the in-vitro testing in the lab is good, then the compounds will be tested in non-human testing subjects.

This grant will aid Dr. Mahdavian’s group in the preclinical stages of the research, and hopefully to the clinical trials with human subjects.  IAMA is proud to have members like Dr. Mahdavian as contributing member to society with her phenomenal research.

For more information on Dr. Mahdavian’s research please see:

http://lbrn.lsu.edu/portal/staticpages/index.php?page=PI-Elahe-Mahdavian&disp_mode=print