Rate My Professor Taslim Al-Hilal

Taslim Al-Hilal, Ph.D., serves as Associate Professor in the Department of Molecular Pharmaceutics within the College of Pharmacy and the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Utah, joining as joint tenure-track faculty in January 2024. He obtained his Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Sciences from Seoul National University in South Korea in 2014, along with a Master of Pharmacy from the same university and an earlier M.S. in Pharmacy from the University of Development Alternative in Bangladesh. His postdoctoral training was completed at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center and Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School. Before arriving at Utah, Al-Hilal was Assistant Professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Texas at El Paso, where he began his independent faculty career in 2019.

Al-Hilal's research employs interdisciplinary approaches combining pharmaceutical sciences, biology, and engineering to investigate differences between physiological and pathological cues that drive the progression of vascular and cancer diseases. His laboratory utilizes on-chip models, stiffness-patterned bioengineering platforms, and transgenic animal models to discover molecular markers and therapeutic targets. Current projects focus on the role of the prion-like protein Doppel in tumor microenvironments and progression, the tumor-coagulome in immunosuppression, ovarian cancer disparity and heterogeneity through ascitic-fluid-derived organoid models, and cell-specific durotaxis in fibrotic lung diseases. With over 40 peer-reviewed publications, notable works include "Durotaxis is a driver and therapeutic target in organ fibrosis and metastatic cancer" published in Nature Cell Biology (2025), "Stromal Fibrin Shapes Immune Infiltration Landscape of Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma" in Biomaterials (2025), and "Transcriptomic Profiling of Microfluidic-Captured Patient-Derived Circulating Endothelial Cells Identifies Novel Genes of Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension Linked to BMPR2-Signaling Pathways" in Biomaterials (2025). His research has attracted substantial funding, including a $1.4 million R01 grant from the National Cancer Institute for targeting Doppel in lung cancer, a $173,854 NCI R21 for Doppel as a biomarker in ovarian cancer, and $500,000 from Department of Defense STTR Phase II and Concept Awards for multiplex gene detection assays in ovarian cancer patients. Al-Hilal's scholarship is evidenced by over 1,700 citations on Google Scholar.