Ghrelin is a newly discovered hormone, which has broadly been studied in relation to its role in control of the feeding behavior. Its roles in gastrointestinal tract largely remained undiscovered, till November, 2009, when Dr. Talat Waseem from Harvard Medical School, presented his research work at 2009 International Symposium on Ghrelin held at Tokyo, Japan.
Dr. Waseem has revealed anti-inflammatory and regenerative properties of ghrelin at in vitro and in vivo level. He has discovered that ghrelin has potent pro-proliferative and anti-apoptotic properties to prevent intestinal epithelial cells against inflammatory and oxidative stress. He also demonstrated that exogenous administration of ghrelin to rats augments intestinal mucosal hypertrophy. Based on his work he proposed its possible use in conditions like ulcerative colitis, ischemia re-perfusion gut injury and short gut syndrome (1,2,3).
Dr. Waseem is a well known research scientist, who has previously published extensively (4) into the peer reviewed international journals including Journal of American College of Surgeons (5), Surgical Oncology, Surgery, Peptides, Cancer Research & Clinical Cancer Research. His work mainly focuses on ghrelin & pancreatic / colorectal cancer.
References:
1. http://www.2009ghrelintokyo.com/
2. http://www.2009ghrelintokyo.com/program/program_day2.pdf
3. http://www.2009ghrelintokyo.com/program/poster.pdf
4. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov (Search ‘waseem t’)
5. http://www.journalacs.org/article/S1072-7515(04)00420-X/abstract