Natasha Anwar

Natasha Anwar (born 1971) is a Molecular Biologist born in Britain to Pakistani parents. She completed her education in London at the Imperial College of Science Technology and Medicine, getting a PhD in Molecular Biology. Soon after she moved back to her home in Lahore, Pakistan, she began conducting her research at Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital and Research Centre (SKMCH & RC) focusing mainly on health issues specific to the Pakistani population. She became a professor at the Froman Christian College in 2011 and has also partnered with biotechnology companies and is now partaking in research on tuberculosis and viral infections.
She has contributed to the Pakistani and Muslim community by investigating infected minority populations in many of her researches. Such investigation sheds light on improving the health security and establishment of improved health systems over time in developing areas.
Between 1998-2001, she published a paper on the effects of N. meningitidis and how such association are affected through immunogenicity, the immune response, and also the serotypes through the Pakistani population. In addition, she has studied different ways by which the bactericidal activity of the blood against the pathogen can be quantified.
In 2008, she published another paper about HPV/Cervical cancer and carcinoma on the Pakistani and Muslim community, giving more insight to how current stages of cancer are affecting specifically the Pakistani population relative to worldwide numbers, including finding more effective ways of prevention for the Muslim community. Three years later, she was involved in comparing molecular and conventional methods of diagnosing tuberculosis. By comparing traditional techniques used in Pakistan and evaluating their efficacy against high-powered expensive techniques highly used in developed countries such as PCR, they established pros and cons to each technique and what would be the most appropriate approach depending on time and resource availability.
Research
Neisseria meningitidis
Neisseria meningitidis is a parasitic organism which colonizes the upper respiratory tract. It is usually commensal, but will sometimes become pathogenic, attacking the host and causing meningococcal disease. No effective vaccine exists for the variations of serogroup B. Specifically, the ability of mannose binding lectin, a component of the immune system involved in the lectin pathway of opsonization, to bind onto N. meningitidis when it’s LOS outer core and/or capsule had been removed was determined by utilizing flow cytometry and gel electrophoresis.
Specific to this, Dr. Natasha Anwar and her colleagues investigated the methods associated with the diagnosis of tuberculosis, which involve the molecular and conventional methods. Amongst developing countries, conventional methods including the Lowenstein Jensen culturing media and the Zheil Neelsen (also known as acid fast staining specific for mycobacterium) are the current methods being used. Polymerase chain reaction, a type of molecular method, has not been widely tested in those countries. They investigated the ability of the bacterium by comparing the results of PCR to the products of possible smear and culture positivity. Traces of such bacterium were examined in patients with pulmonary or extra-pulmonary patients with certain physiological problems. Clinical data was taken from the collaboration involving King Edward Medical University and S.K.M.C Hospital. Dr. Anwar and her colleagues found that PCR was the most influential compared to culture and smear positivity, when diagnosing tuberculosis.
Of the specimens in pulmonary and extra-pulmonary they investigated for both molecular and conventional methods, Dr. Anwar and her team found that PCR was most influential in terms of expressing the highest positivity percentages. Based on the results, Dr. Anwar and her team found PCR to be more rapid and sensitive, even though costly expenses are involved. Cultural and smear methods tend to be insensitive while long durations are required for such results.
Such study serves for future advantages in the scopes of diagnosing early stages of tuberculosis and the regulation of disease development of human survival. In addition, early diagnosis may also benefit effectively for individuals with more than one complicated health problem simultaneously.
Colorectal Cancer
Before the beginning of this study, it was thought that despite colorectal cancer (CRC) being one of the most prevalent forms of gastrointestinal cancer worldwide, that it was rather uncommon in the Pakistani population. During this study, Dr. Anwar and her team reviewed all medical records of CRC from SKMCH & RC from 1995-2004. Through assessing this epidemiological data, it was shown that 69% of these patients were already in the later stages, stages III and IV, of the disease at which the median survival time was calculated as being 54-27 months.
Comparing the results to Western countries, it was seen that the mean age that CRC was presented was significantly lower (less than 50 in Pakistan versus 70+ in developed countries). Further comparisons to a more related country, Iran, revealed that the age at presentation was almost 10 years lower. In her paper, Dr. Anwar attributes these differences to the living conditions in Pakistan, raising awareness to the way CRC is viewed in the society. She declares several reasons to why such a drastic difference is seen between the Pakistani population and Western or even neighbouring countries. One reason was that the mean age of the population is generally lower. However, she further goes on to describe that poverty, lack of healthcare, and the reliance on traditional healers could be significant reasons as to why many of the patients were in the late stages of the disease. Since SKMCH & RC is a tertiary institute, most patients would have most likely seen other physicians. Anwar states that the lack of properly trained physicians and the assumption that CRC does not have a relatively early age of presentation in Pakistan may lead the physicians to diagnose the patient as having hemorrhoids rather than CRC.
This study shed light on the popular misconception that CRC is not prevalent in Pakistan. Currently Dr. Anwar and her team are interested in investigating environmental and genetic factors that are involved in CRC in Pakistan compared to Western countries.
Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) and Cervix Uteri (Cervical) Cancer
A study looking at rates of cervical cance<nowiki/>r in Pakistan compared to global populations was conducted due to the lack of a Pap smear screening program in Pakistan. The study focused on trying to implement HPV testing as a substitute for Pap smears. Although the instances of cervical cancer are globally high, they are relatively low in Pakistani women. However, incidences involving HPV subtypes that can lead to cervical cancer, such as HPV-16, was shown to be common with HPV-16 being prevalent at 2.8% in women 15-59 years of age in Pakistan and seen in 92% of invasive cervical cancer cases. With the worldwide rate of HPV-16 being 3.2% and considered one of the most common types, the study indicates that HPV prevalence is high in Pakistan. Dr. Anwar was involved in advocating for some alternative methods to assess cervical cancer based on these results that do not require Pap smears such as HPV testing, or even other low-cost alternatives such as the Visual Inspection with Acetic acid.
Dr. Anwar and her team are hopeful to use the SKMCH institute for further epidemiological work for cervical cancer in Muslim populations and to test an approved FDA HPV vaccine in preventing cervical cancer.
Personal struggles in London
In an interview that Dr. Anwar did with The Guardian, she spoke of her choice to move to Pakistan.

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