Ping Wu
University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, TX·Neuroscience
A developing brain is vulnerable to what reaches it through the mother, whether medications or viruses. The lab studies how two such exposures disrupt neural stem progenitor cells (NSPCs), the cells that build the fetal brain.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Microbiology & Immunology
Pharmacology
- Topics
prenatal opioid exposure
buprenorphine
methadone
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Apr 2027
What they work on
- Determine how prenatal buprenorphine exposure alters embryonic neurogenesis and brain development in offspring, using a mouse model that mimics standard treatment for opioid use disorder in pregnancy.
- Relate opioid-induced changes in the mesocortical dopamine pathway to ADHD-like behaviors in offspring, testing for differences between males and females.
- Identify molecular mechanisms by which maternal opioids act on embryonic neural stem progenitor cells, using genetic and pharmacological manipulation in cell and animal models.
- Determine how Peli1, a ubiquitin-tagging enzyme, promotes Zika virus infection of yolk sac-derived microglia and virus spread to fetal neural stem cells.
- Test how Peli1 drives microglial activation after Zika infection and how this changes neural differentiation, using mouse models and mouse and human cells.
More about the research
One exposure is opioids taken during pregnancy. The other is Zika virus (ZIKV), which can cause microcephaly, an abnormally small head and brain. Both projects combine mouse models with cultured mouse and human cells, and analyze outcomes at the molecular, cellular, anatomical and behavioral levels.
Why it matters
Pregnant women treated for opioid use disorder and their children could benefit if the work identifies targets for preventing or treating opioid-related developmental harm. Understanding how microglia and Peli1 help Zika virus reach the fetal brain may point to ways to prevent or treat microcephaly. It could also help with other virus-caused congenital brain infections.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Rupa Radhakrishnan
University of Pittsburgh, PA·Medicine & Clinical Research
Determine how prenatal opioid exposure affects the developing fetal brain over time, using repeated structural and functional fetal brain MRI in pregnancies of mothers with opioid use disorder.
Susanne Brummelte
Wayne State University, MI·Neuroscience
Compare how buprenorphine and morphine, given to female rats from before conception through early postpartum, alter the endogenous opioid system and neurochemistry of the maternal brain network.
Brady Atwood
University of Minnesota, MN·Neuroscience
Test whether oxycodone increases tau protein expression, phosphorylation and oligomerization (clumping) in the mouse prefrontal cortex, and whether these changes cause synaptic dysfunction.
The school
University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston: 14 labs on PI Pages, $241M a year on research, 141 research doctorates a year.
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