Srikant Rangaraju, MBBS, MS

Dr. Rangaraju’s research has focused on exploring immune-mediated mechanisms of neurodegeneration and post-ischemic injury in the brain, leveraging pre-clinical mouse models as well as multi-omics modalities to assess molecular changes occurring in diverse classes of neurons and glial cells. He is also actively involved in clinical research in stroke, via participation in clinical trials, and clinical research studies related to post-stroke prognosis, plasma-based protein biomarkers and risk-stratification in cryptogenic stroke.

Since 2016, the Rangaraju Lab has been funded by the NIH. The group has identified promising therapeutic targets to modulate microglia-mediated mechanisms in neurodegeneration and stroke. On example is the potassium channel, Kv1.3, that is over-expressed in a sub-set of pro-inflammatory microglia and macrophages in the brain in Alzheimer’s disease, as well as in the sub-acute phase following ischemic stroke. Using pharmacological and genetic approaches to manipulate Kv1.3, they have identified Kv1.3 channels as key regulators of neuroinflammatory responses in these diseases. The group has also developed novel in vivo tools to assess protein-level (proteomic) mechanisms of disease that are unique to different brain cell types, in pre-clinical mouse models. To this end, they have developed an approach called cell type-specific in vivo biotinylation of proteins (CIBOP) to identify early molecular changes occurring in neurons and glial cells, which can be therapeutic targets for disease-modification.

• Advances in proteomic phenotyping of microglia in neurodegeneration, Proteomics, 2023.
• Cell type-specific biotin labeling in vivo resolves regional neuronal and astrocyte proteomic differences in mouse brain, Nature Communications, 2022.
• Unique molecular characteristics and microglial origin of Kv1.3 channel-positive brain myeloid cells in Alzheimer's disease, PNAS, 2021.
• BIN1 is a key regulator of proinflammatory and neurodegeneration-related activation in microglia, Molecular Neurodegeneration, 2022.
• Prognostic Scores for Large Vessel Occlusion Strokes, Neurology, 2021.
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