Sravan Perla, PhD, MSc

Research Background:

Sravan Perla obtained his M.Sc. in Medical Biochemistry from JIPMER, Puducherry, India. Subsequently, he joined Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore India. He carried out brief research at IISc (with Raghavan Varadarajan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raghavan_Varadarajan and Upendra Nongthomba https://dbg.iisc.ac.in/faculty/). Sravan Perla moved to the United States in 2014 to embark his Ph.D journey at University of Toledo School of Medicine and New York Medical College, New York. During his doctoral studies, he studied the Epigenetic Regulation of the human Angiotensinogen (AGT) gene. After earning his PhD, he moved to Yale School of Medicine, to work with Anton Bennett (https://www.bennett-lab.org/) where he is exploring the signaling mechanisms of Protein Tyrosine Phosphatases(PTPs) in the regulation of Congenital Heart Diseases and Metabolism.

Current Research:

The goal of my ongoing and future research is to decode the PZR/Shp2/Irx3/Irx5/BMP10 pathway. This will have a great impact on the understanding of this cell signaling pathway as it will allow to find the therapeutic targets to treat cardiovascular diseases particularly Noonan syndrome (NS) and Noonan syndrome with multiple lentigines (NSML). I intend to continue this research on the cell signaling mechanisms of PZR/Shp2/Irx3/Irx5/BMP10 pathway as a foundation for therapeutic advances. Since finding a new medicine and bringing that into market is very time consuming and expensive process. So, my strategy would be repurposing the existing medicines and treating the disease. As part of this journey, we developed preliminary data in treating cardiomyopathy by using low-dose dasatinib. We have got promising results, and I hope to contribute significantly to the field and continue to go further.

Future Research:

One of my envisioned projects involves treating Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy(HCM) by using recombinant human BMP10. This gene encodes a secreted ligand of the TGF-beta superfamily of proteins. Ligands of this family bind various TGF-beta receptors leading to recruitment and activation of SMAD family transcription factors that regulate gene expression. BMP10 plays an important role in cardiovascular development including cardiomyocyte proliferation and regulation of heart size, closure of the ductus arteriosus, angiogenesis and ventricular trabeculation. BMP10 is a negative regulator of cardiac growth. Our focus is on developing novel therapies for the congenital heart defects in children and help children and their families to live a normal life.