Exclusive Interview with Dr. Hameeda Sultana - Insights into the Arthropod-derived Exosomes

On November 30, 2022, the Editorial Office of Extracellular Vesicles and Circulating Nucleic Acids (EVCNA) had an exclusive interview with Dr. Hameeda Sultana to discuss her current research projects in arthropod exosomes and her expectation in this field.

Dr. Sultana is an Associate Professor at the College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Tennessee, USA. Her lab’s novel research on arthropod-derived exosomes in mediating flavivirus transmission is highly rewarding. They have been currently identifying and characterizing the cargo and cargo sorting mechanisms in arthropod exosomes.

Recently, Dr. Sultana won ATCC's 2022 Innovation Challenge for her innovative research into the function of human telomerase reverse transcriptase mesenchymal stromal cells (hTERT MSC) exosomes on flavivirus replication.

During the interview, Dr. Sultana shared her research journey, ongoing projects, and progress. She also talked about the innovative research of the ATCC Challenge. Additionally, the interesting topic of arthropod exosomes was elaborated on as well. Looking ahead, Dr. Sultana talked about her prospects and gave researchers some suggestions to begin their journey in this field.

The following are her responses to the interview questions.

Q1: Could you please share with us your career journey and how your research interests focus on vector-borne viral diseases?

Q2: What are your current projects mainly focused on and what kind of research achievements and progress have you obtained?

Q3: What roles do neuronal exosomes play in infection and disease?

Q4: Could you please introduce us more about this innovative study, which gets the ATCC award?

Q5: Your work on arthropod exosomes is very exciting, please tell us more about this line of research and where do you see this going in the future?

Q6: What kind of research goal do you want to achieve in the next five years?

Q7: What pieces of advice will you give to scientists to start their journey in this field?