A Saudi student pursuing his PhD studies at Oxford University in Britain has discovered two new genes linked to the development of breast cancer. Hani Choudary obtained his BSc (Honors) in Biochemistry from King Abdulaziz University (KAU) in Jeddah in 2006. He was then appointed as a teaching assistant in the Biochemistry Department at KAU and awarded a fully-funded scholarship for his postgraduate studies. Choudary received an MSc with distinction in Molecular Biology from the University of Sheffield in 2009, where he worked on epigenetically regulated genes in bladder cancer. He joined the Genomics Research Group in January 2010 as a DPhil Clinical Medicine student. He is interested in using high throughput next generation sequencing, such as RNA-sequencing, to investigate the transcriptome of breast cancer cells. His project aims to understand the genetics of breast cancer cells under hypoxic conditions (where the body is deprived of oxygen). He is also involved in developing directional next generation sequencing and single cell technology by transcriptome analysis. Choudary is jointly supervised by Dr. Ioannis Ragoussis, head of the Genomic Research Group and Prof. Adrian Harris, head of the Department of Medical Oncology at John Radcliffe Hospital. He is now engaged in officially registering his scientific achievement at the Human Genome Organization with a reference to KAU. Harris has praised Choudary's work and called for more outstanding students from KAU to study at Oxford University.
