Dr. Zgheib is Tenured and Board Designated Professor at the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, American University of Beirut Faculty of Medicine (AUBFM). She is a Family Physician, graduate of the AUB. She then trained in pharmacogenetics (PGx), drug metabolism, and inter-individual variability at the Center for Clinical Pharmacology at the University of Pittsburgh.
Dr. Zgheib launched the PGx laboratory at AUBFM in 2007. Several projects on the genetic polymorphisms of drug metabolizing enzymes and transporters with treatment of cancers to include breast cancer and childhood leukemias are ongoing. She initially started with the “candidate gene” PGx approach and recently moved to higher throughput analyses. Current projects are hence geared towards performing more extensive genotyping, and including bigger and more representative population samples such as by developing research registries and prospectively following up patients.
The PGx lab is also part of toxicology projects that aim at understanding the role and mechanism of environmental toxigens in cancer. Dr. Zgheib also leads the cardiovascular biorepository at the Vascular Medicine Program, and is currently involved in research projects with the aim to elucidate epigenetic biomarkers for the link between cardiovascular diseases and air pollution. Notably, Dr. Zgheib has been leading a series of studies and scholarly efforts in knowledge translation with the aim to better understand the distinct challenges and opportunities for the clinical implementation of PGx in the MENA region.
Dr. Zgheib is funded by intramural and extramural grants. In 2020, she received the prestigious Abdul Hameed Shoman Award for Arab Researchers for PGx.