Li-Ru Zhao
Upstate Medical University, NY·Neuroscience
Severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) often strikes young adults. It can leave them with lifelong problems in memory, learning, emotional control, and movement, and it raises the risk of later neurodegenerative disease.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Pharmacology
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
traumatic brain injury
chronic TBI
stem cell factor
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Mar 2027
What they work on
- Determine how SCF+G-CSF given in the chronic phase of severe TBI enhances remyelination in cerebral white matter of young adult mice, using Cre-LoxP genetic tools and cellular and molecular analyses.
- Define how chronic-phase SCF+G-CSF treatment promotes regeneration of neural structures, using two-photon live brain imaging in mice.
- Relate treatment-driven remyelination and neural structure repair to improvements in cognition and motor function, measured through neurobehavioral testing.
More about the research
TBI is now seen as the start of a chronic condition. Yet there is no treatment that improves recovery in the chronic phase, which begins 3–6 months after injury and lasts a lifetime.
Why it matters
People living with the long-term effects of severe TBI currently have no treatment that improves recovery months or years after injury. Explaining how SCF+G-CSF repairs the chronically injured brain could provide the evidence needed to develop a drug-based therapy. Such a therapy could reduce lifelong disability and dependence on long-term care.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Courtney Robertson
Johns Hopkins University, MD·Neuroscience
Test whether sedation-induced brain injury after traumatic brain injury depends on GABA receptors, the brain's main inhibitory receptors, by comparing midazolam with dexmedetomidine, a sedative without GABA activity, in a rodent model.
Huntington Potter
University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus, CO·Medicine & Clinical Research
Assess the long-term safety and tolerability of 24 weeks of sargramostim, a recombinant form of the immune-stimulating protein GM-CSF, in a randomized, placebo-controlled trial of 42 people with mild-to-moderate Alzheimer's disease.
Robert Marr
Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science, IL·Neuroscience
Test how pharmacologically altering the activity of neprilysin and NEP2, enzymes that degrade amyloid-beta, changes acute pathology and recovery in the days after traumatic brain injury in APP-humanized mice.
The school
Upstate Medical University: 7 labs on PI Pages, $59M a year on research, 23 research doctorates a year.
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