Dr. Khella is an Assistant Professor at the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College (CMCC) and actively involved in teaching a number of basic as well as clinical sciences courses. She is an MD with a PhD degree from University of Toronto, an innovative, and creative thinking health care professional, researcher and teacher. In addition to broad clinical experience, she has diverse experience in several research fields from cancer research to chronic diseases. She obtained her medical degree and MSc degree from Egypt and was appointed as a faculty member at the Department of Anatomy and Embryology, Suez Canal University. Also, she has extensive clinical experience in diverse health care systems. She joined the Institute of Medical Science, University of Toronto as a PhD Student. This was followed by Postdoctoral fellowship training at St. Michael's Hospital. Dr. Khella hard work was rewarded by receiving many prestigious awards as well as a strong record of peer-reviewed articles, abstracts and conference presentations. She initiated and conducted multiple successful projects in the field of miRNAs, kidney cancer and low back pain research. In the field of low back pain, her research is mainly focused on exploring the molecular basis of low back pain and exploring the role of miRNAs as key regulatory molecules in the inflammatory process. This will help in more understanding of the pathogenesis of low back pain and can lead to new biomarker discovery for this common distressing complaint. In the field of kidney cancer, her research is mainly focused on exploring the role of miRNAs in renal cell carcinoma (RCC) tumour progression. She tested the clinical utility of miRNAs as prognostic and predictive biomarkers in RCC in a large cohort of patients. Dr. Khella identified the miRNAs that are dysregulated in metastatic renal cell carcinoma compared to primary renal cell carcinoma and validated this signature on primary and metastatic RCC tissues. Also, she tested the effect of changing the level of these miRNAs on cellular proliferation, invasion, and migration in RCC cell line models. Her research showed that miRNAs play an important role in RCC progression and represent promising prognostic and predictive biomarkers in RCC.
Molecular pathology; Low Back Pain; Cytokines; miRNA; Biomarker discovery; Inflammation; Molecular Diagnosis; Renal Cell Carcinoma; Precision medicine; Targeted therapy