Education and Training:
Muzamil Majid Khan completed his master’s thesis at the National Centre for Biological Sciences, India. There, he worked on the olfactory behavior of Drosophila melanogaster larvae. Following his master’s thesis, he completed his PhD under the supervision of Prof. Rüdiger Rudolf at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, while working on endo/lysosomal trafficking at the mouse neuromuscular junction using live single and 2-photon microscopy. Follow up doctoral dissertation work led to the characterization of sympathetic neuronal input to the neuromuscular junction, which explained clinical benefits of sympathomimetic drugs in patient congenital myasthenic syndrome. Encouraged by this work, he joined a collaborative effort between GlaxoSmithKline and Rainer Pepperkok’s lab at EMBL to tackle drug discovery against interstitial lung disease using ex-vivo culture human tissue slices (hPCLS) and label-free Second Harmonic imaging.
Expertise:
Muzamil Majid Khan has a strong background in perturbations in Cell biology and Cell physiology in health and diseased conditons. His current focus is on Interstitial lung disease and how the progression of this devastating disease is modulated by Extracellular matrix (ECM) signalling. He has screened drug libraries for drug discovery against ILD based on the deposition of fibrillar collagen in the ECM of in-vitro cultured primary fibroblast cultures. His research uses primarily tools such live light microscopy, siRNA mediated gene silencing and label-free 2 photon imaging on various ex-vivo (hPCLS) and in-vitro models of ILD.
Interstitial Lung disease
Label-Free imaging
ECM signalling
Diffuse Parenchymal Lung Disease
- Tuechler N, Burtscher ML, Garrido-Rodriguez M, Khan MM,…..Pepperkok R. Dynamic multi-omics and mechanistic modeling approach uncovers novel mechanisms of kidney fibrosis progression Accepted, Mol. Syt. Biology, 2025
- Khan MM*, Zukowska J,…., Savitski M, Pepperkok R*. Dextromethorphan inhibits collagen transport in the endoplasmic reticulum eliciting an anti-fibrotic response in ex-vivo and in vitro models of pulmonary fibrosis. Science Translational Medicine, 2024, *Corresponding Authors
- Khan MM, Poeckel D, Halavatyi A, Zukowska-Kasprzyk J, Stein F, Vappiani J, Sevin DC, Tischer C, Zinn N, Eley JD, Gudmann NS, Muley T, Winter H, Fisher AJ, Nanthakumar CB, Bergamini G, Pepperkok R. An integrated multiomic and quantitative label-free microscopy-based approach to study pro-fibrotic signalling in ex vivo human precision-cut lung slices. The European respiratory journal 2020 33361096. doi:10.1183/13993003.00221-2020.
- Khan MM, Lustrino D, Silveira WA, Wild F, Straka T, Issop Y, O'Connor E, Cox D, Reischl M, Marquardt T, Labeit D, Labeit S, Benoit E, Molgó J, Lochmüller H, Witzemann V, Kettelhut IC, Navegantes LC, Pozzan T, Rudolf R. Sympathetic innervation controls homeostasis of neuromuscular junctions in health and disease. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 2016. 26733679. doi:10.1073/pnas.1524272113.
- Khan MM, Strack S, Wild F, Hanashima A, Gasch A, Brohm K, Reischl M, Carnio S, Labeit D, Sandri M, Labeit S, Rudolf R. Role of autophagy, SQSTM1, SH3GLB1, and TRIM63 in the turnover of nicotinic acetylcholine receptors. Autophagy 2014. 24220501. doi:10.4161/auto.26841.
