Sitting back in a chair in his sparsely decorated office in the Translational Science Research Building, Kafait Malik, DSc, PhD, ponders his 50 years at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center.
Of course, he is proud that his research, focusing on neurohormonal factors underlying the development and progression of hypertension and associated cardiovascular and kidney dysfunction, has been funded by the National Institutes of Health since the early 1970s. However, he says his greatest pride comes from the myriad students, postdoctoral fellows, visiting scientists, and laboratory technical staff he has taught and mentored over his remarkable five decades at the university.
“When you look back in life, what gives you the biggest satisfaction, not taking, but giving,” Dr. Malik says. “Training these people, who have gone on to establish their own research programs, become physicians, teachers, and some hold leadership roles in academia and biotech companies. I’m happy for them.”
A professor with appointments in the Departments of Pharmacology, Addiction Science, and Toxicology, as well as Medicine, Dr. Malik receives his 50-year service award from the university on Thursday. He is among 10 individuals receiving awards for having served the university for as many as four decades.
Ask the internationally respected scientist and teacher why he chose to spend his career at UT Health Science Center. He has a simple, but profound answer.
“It was the people and the opportunity to shape the future of medicine and research,” he says.
The Route to Tennessee
The path that brought Dr. Malik to the University of Tennessee Health Science Center had many twists and turns. Curiosity, perseverance, networking, and strong relationships with mentors helped him navigate the academic and scientific terrain.
Dr. Malik joined the university in 1975 as an associate professor, following his mentor, John C. McGiff, MD, who was appointed professor and chair of the Department of Pharmacology. Dr. McGiff left after a few years for a chairmanship at New York Medical College. Dr. Malik, who by then had a family, stayed.
Dr. Malik was born and raised in Sialkot, a city in Pakistan on the border of Kashmir. He attended the University of Punjab in Lahore, studying pharmaceutical sciences. The young Kashmiri student had to learn the Punjabi language. It would be the first of many languages, including Arabic, Hindi, Urdu, German, Serbo-Croatian, French, and English, he would have to learn, or at least understand, during his academic journey from Pakistan to Europe, to Canada, and finally to the United States.
He earned a degree in pharmacy from the University of Punjab. “We had to take many subjects in the basic sciences, including biochemistry, physiology, pharmacology, that is medicine,” he says. The classes at King Edward Medical College in Lahore sparked his interest in biomedical sciences.
A scholarship took him to Yugoslavia and the University of Zagreb, where he earned a Doctor of Science degree in pharmaceutical sciences in 1964. He was only 24 years old at the time.
He next worked as a research assistant at the Institute of Pharmacology at the University of Sarajevo, earning a master’s and a PhD in pharmacology in 1966. There, he became interested in the action of drugs on the human body.
After postgraduate work as a research associate at the Institute of Pharmacology at the University of Mainz in West Germany, Dr. Malik moved to Canada for a postdoctoral fellowship from the Ontario Mental Health Foundation at the University of Ottawa.
Networking and science had led him across the ocean and brought him next to St. Louis University School of Medicine as an instructor in the laboratory of Dr. McGiff in the Division of Cardiology in the Department of Internal Medicine. Dr. Malik later moved with Dr. McGiff to the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee as an assistant professor.
When Dr. McGiff got the position at what is now UT Health Science Center in 1975, Dr. Malik and several others followed him to Memphis. Their offices were in the old Crowe Building, which at the time had been renovated, but was anything but fancy, he recalls.
Dr. Malik, who had received NIH and American Heart Association funding for his hypertension research while in Milwaukee, had established his lab in Memphis and did not leave the university when his mentor did in 1979. “I stayed because it would have been very difficult to move,” he says.
A Lifetime’s Research
Dr. Malik received the initial funding in 1973 from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the NIH for his research titled, “Angiotensins, Prostaglandins-Adrenergic Interactions,” focusing on the mechanisms influencing the development of high blood pressure or hypertension.
From Memphis, he continued to travel and network with other scientists and brought visiting researchers to the university. “It became quite an interesting place to work,” he says.
“We study the interaction among neurohormonal factors and how they regulate the vascular tone in the kidneys and heart function and how the imbalance in the neurohormonal systems leads to cardiovascular and kidney dysfunction and the development of hypertension,” he says.
Dr. Malik has also had another NIH grant for 15 years to study the neurohormonal mechanisms involved in the development of vascular restenosis, atherosclerosis, and aortic aneurysms. His lab is credited with pioneering advancement of the underlying molecular neurohormonal mechanisms of sex differences in the development of hypertension and its pathogenesis.
“He’s one of a kind,” says Syamal Bhattacharya, PhD, professor of cardiology in the College of Medicine and Dr. Malik’s friend since Dr. Bhattacharya joined the university in 1978. “He’s the only scientist that I know in the United States who has had the same grant for 52 years.”
Dr. Malik is one of an elite cadre of scientists to receive a MERIT (Method to Extend Research in Time) Award, a prestigious grant given to outstanding and experienced researchers with a record of productivity and research progression. Recipients do not need to resubmit their grants for 10 years.
“He’s an outstanding, internationally recognized scientist, and his work in the area of neurohormonal interactions in the development of hypertension is seminal and unparalleled,” Dr. Bhattacharya says.
Dr. Battacharya points out his longtime friend is also noted for his outstanding teaching through the years. “He received so many teaching awards given by students, residents, and faculty.”
Shubha Dutta, PhD, a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Pharmacology at UT Health Science Center, says he is honored to have had Dr. Malik as his PhD mentor. “His commitment to excellence, patience in supervision, and encouragement during challenging moments have profoundly shaped both my research and my personal growth as a scholar.”
Similarly, Salvatore Mancarella, PhD, an associate professor in the Department of Physiology, is grateful for Dr. Malik’s guidance, exceptional mentorship, and belief in his potential. “It has been an honor to learn from him, and I will carry the lessons he has imparted to me throughout my career,” he says.
Alex Dopico, MD, PhD, Distinguished Professor and Harriet S. Van Vleet Chair of Excellence in Pharmacology in the Department of Pharmacology, Addiction Science, and Toxicology, says Dr. Malik is “a towering figure and an internationally recognized leader in the pharmacology and pathophysiology of arterial hypertension.
“Whether in his institutional and extra-institutional services as a mentor and teacher with countless of his fellows becoming academic research leaders around the world, or as a scholar with almost 230 peer-reviewed scientific publications and a research program on neurohormonal mechanisms of sex differences in systemic hypertension funded by NHLBI for more than five decades, Dr. Malik has embodied the highest ideals of UT Health Science Center during his 50 years of service in our department and institution. Today, after an unparalleled academic career, Professor Malik continues his multiple services with the enthusiasm and energy of a recently recruited fellow, setting an example for all of us to follow.”
Dedication to Science and Service
Omar Malik, Dr. Malik’s son, who works at UT Health Science Center as a senior compliance resolution officer, speaks of his father’s dedication to family and the institution. “He not only dedicated his life to UTHSC and his research but dedicated his heart and soul to raising his children,” the younger Malik says. Dr. Malik has three children and seven grandchildren.
“I remember coming to the SAC (Wassell Randolph Student-Alumni Center) as a kid in the late ’80s and early ’90s with my brother, where we would play table tennis in the summers, while my dad focused on his work and research, watching and seeing his commitment firsthand. And now, over 30 years later, I am lucky enough to work here at UTHSC with him and see the countless number of lives he’s touched here.”
Dr. Malik is still one of the first to arrive at his office on the second floor of the Translational Science Research Building each morning, greeting the crew getting the building ready for the day.
With characteristic modesty, he describes his career as fulfilling.
“I utilized what I could,” he says. “You do your best.”