Curriculum Vitae

Dr. Reham Khalaf-Nazzal is a clinical academic of Human Physiology and Genomic Medicine, and a leader of the ‘Stories of Hope, Stories from Palestine’ community-based, translational genomics project. The primary focus of the ‘Stories of Hope, Stories from Palestine’ project is to characterise the clinical and molecular basis of rare diseases in Palestinian communities and to translate research findings into improved diagnostic provision and clinical care for affected patients, families, and their communities. My group is also working to compile a database of founder gene mutations to facilitate the development of a genotyping platform that can be used for multiple purposes including diagnostics, carrier testing and newborn screening. The overall aim of my work is to translate research findings into improvements in patient-centred clinical care. My research stands as a strong inspiration for delivering academic courses in Medical Genetics and Developmental Neurosciences, with tailored scientific content to the context of local health challenges and clinical scenarios in rare genetic diseases. The overarching objective of my work aims at advancing scientific and medical knowledge of hereditary and neurodevelopmental disorders, through adopting a multidisciplinary approach from patient bed to laboratory bench and test tube. Initial data gathered in this project showed promising potential for novel gene discoveries and led to the identification of biomolecular disease mechanisms while providing impacting diagnostic and clinical management benefits for participating families. We continue our efforts to seed future focussed studies to investigate the biomolecular disease mechanisms identified through developing a solid scientific platform for project expansion enabling a long-term patient and family recruitment program for continued discoveries of neurodevelopmental molecules and biological pathways. To achieve these optimistic goals, we work to cement collaborative relationship with the leading international scientists and institutions.