About Dr. Baba

Shahid Baba, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Medicine

Shahid Pervez Baba, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor at Christina Lee Brown Envirome Institute, and the Center for Cardiometabolic Science at the University of Louisville.

Dr. Baba received Ph.D. in Biochemistry in 2006 at Aligarh Muslim University, India. He received the Phillip Morris Post doctoral Fellowship and completed his post-doctoral training with Sanjay Srivastava, Ph.D., at University of Louisville. He received an American Heart Association Beginners Development Grant in 2011, and was recruited as a faculty in the UofL Department of Medicine.

His previous work elucidated the role of aldehyde removing enzymes, such as aldose reductase in cardiovascular diseases. Using genetically modified mice he showed that accumulation of lipid peroxidation products, such as acrolein, activates autophagy, causes pathological cardiac remodeling and exacerbates cardiac ischemia reperfusion injury.

Based on these findings, his laboratory examined the role of endogenous dipeptides, such as carnosine, which buffers intracellular pH and bind with reactive aldehydes in cardiac ischemia reperfusion injury. His recent work show that these dipeptides imparts cardiac protection during ischemia reperfusion injury. This work was funded by NIH R01.

Dr.Baba's work shows that histidyl dipeptides improves angiogenesis. Based on these results, they are testing whether histidyl dipeptides could  improve the blood flow to the lower extremities of peripheral arterial disease patients.

Dr. Baba is the chairperson of International Congress of Carnosine and Anserine, a network of lead researchers around the world working in this field.