Mandakh Bekhbat
Emory University, GA·Neuroscience·Early-career
Many people with HIV feel little pleasure or motivation even when antiretroviral drugs keep the virus under control. These symptoms, called anhedonia and apathy, worsen health outcomes and are hard to treat.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Medicine & Clinical Research
Microbiology & Immunology
- Topics
people with HIV
anhedonia
apathy
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Apr 2029
What they work on
- Measure glycolysis, a fast sugar-burning energy pathway, in blood monocytes from people with HIV, and relate it to inflammation, reward-circuit function and anhedonia.
- Test whether patient monocytes cross a human blood-brain-barrier-on-a-chip, a lab model of the brain's protective lining, and whether this migration tracks with brain inflammation and motivational symptoms.
- Examine how treatment with baricitinib, an anti-inflammatory drug, changes monocyte metabolism, migration and anhedonia in people with HIV enrolled in two parent clinical studies.
More about the research
One explanation is that the inflammation that persists in HIV disrupts the brain's reward circuits. This project asks whether monocytes drive that process. Monocytes are white blood cells that circulate in the blood and can move into tissues, including the brain.
Why it matters
People with HIV often have motivational symptoms such as anhedonia that persist despite antiretroviral therapy and respond poorly to current treatments. Identifying monocyte glycolysis and migration into the brain as drivers could point to new drug targets. Testing immune-modulating drugs such as baricitinib could also inform treatment of inflammation-linked depressive symptoms in HIV and possibly in other medical or psychiatric illnesses.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Ronald J. Ellis
University of California-San Diego, CA·Medicine & Clinical Research
Characterize how gut bacteria and the endocannabinoid system respond to controlled oral THC and CBD in people with and without HIV, using shotgun metagenomic sequencing of stool.
Katrin I. Andreasson
Stanford University, CA·Neuroscience
Test whether reprogramming energy metabolism in aging microglia and blood macrophages, by blocking inflammatory PGE2 signaling, can prevent or reverse cognitive decline in aging and Alzheimer's model mice.
Long Que
Iowa State University, IA·Biomedical Engineering
Develop a microfluidic chip with chamber arrays that links gut bacteria or microbiota to brain tissue models through an in vitro blood-brain barrier, mimicking two-way gut-brain communication.
The school
Emory University: 70 labs on PI Pages, $1.2B a year on research, 286 research doctorates a year.
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