Dr Murtaza Tambuwala is a Pharmacist and has completed his doctoral research at School of Medicine and Medical Sciences, University College Dublin in 2011 under the tutelage of Prof. Cormac Taylor and Dr Ivan Coulter (CEO of Sublimity Therapeutics); funded by Enterprise Partnership Doctoral Research Award from Irish Research Council. He has undertaken postdoctoral training at Trinity Translational Medicine Institute, Trinity College Dublin under the tutelage of Prof. Padraic Fallon funded by post-doctoral research award obtained from Irish Research Council by Dr Tambuwala.

Dr Tambuwala joined Ulster University as a Lecturer in 2013 and established his independent research in the field of inflammation and cancer. The over-arching aims of his research lab are to understand the mechanisms by which hypoxia regulates transcriptional events in inflammation and development of cancer. In particular, he is interested in the regulation of global gene expression in response to hypoxic environment of inflamed adipose tissue/tumour, and the modification of transcriptional regulators which underlies the induction of inflammation, development and progression of cancer. His research is focussed on translating this understanding of hypoxia-sensitive pathways to developing new therapeutics in chronic inflammatory diseases such as IBD, intestinal fibrosis, cardiovascular diseases and colon & breast cancer.

To achieve the overall objectives of the development of new and better medicines he is working on:

1. Developing novel drug delivery systems to target inflamed tissue and cancer tumours.

2. Investigate the biomolecular mechanism of natural compounds in inflammation and cancer.

3. Use 3D printing technologies to develop personalised oral drug delivery system (Tablets) for IBD patients.

4. Application of 3D bioprinting to develop novel models for IBD, cardiovascular inflammation, colon and breast cancer to reduce the use of animals in research.

Dr Tambuwala initiated and directs the MSc in Pharmaceutical Sciences via Distant learning (Online) at Ulster University and is an active contributor in the delivery and development of MPharm programme at the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences.

Dr Tambuwala also serves as a reviewer for UK research councils and several esteemed journals in the field of inflammatory bowel diseases and drug delivery.