Medicine for Alzheimer’s disease: A ray of hope to cure brain inflammation

Work done in the lab of Prof. Thota Ganesh at Department of Pharmacology and Chemical Biology, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA

About author

Dr. Avijit Banik is a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Ganesh’s laboratory at Emory University. He completed his Master’s from Bangalore University and Ph.D. in neuroscience from PGIMER, Chandigarh, India. After that, he went for postdoctoral training at the National University of Singapore and now at Emory University for the last four years. His research interest includes cognitive neuroscience and neuroinflammation with specialization in the field of Alzheimer’s disease.

Dr. Radhika Amaradhi is working as Research Scientist in Dr. Ganesh’s laboratory. She obtained her Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Chemical Technology, India, then did a postdoctoral fellowship at UT-Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, before she moved to Emory University. Her research interests include medicinal chemistry, drug discovery, and asymmetric organocatalysis.

Dr. Thota Ganesh obtained his Master’s and Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Osmania University, India. He conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Durham, UK, and Virginia Tech, USA. He then moved to Emory University, where he is currently an associate professor. His research interests are to develop novel therapeutics for various brain disorders, including Alzheimer’s disease and Epilepsy. He published more than 100 publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals and conferences in biomedical research with a web of science h-index = 22.

Interview

How would you explain your research outcomes to the non-scientific community?

Using routine terminology, I will begin by asking how our brain thinks? What makes the brain a unique organ in our body? How does it control the movement, thinking, processing, reacting, and responding and not taking any actions (judgment) on certain things? That is the overall goal of our research in the context of Alzheimer’s disease (a form of dementia). Alzheimer’s disease is a neurological disorder where patients suffer from the loss of neurons in the brain, causing memory loss and difficulties in remembering recent events in their daily lives. There is currently no cure for this disease, and in our laboratory, we investigate Alzheimer’s brain inflammation in search of new medicine for this complex disease.

How do these findings contribute to your research area?

If we know how the brain usually thinks, then we can study the ingredients in it needed for the normal function of the brain. Then we look for things that are not normal in the ill-functioned or mal-functioned brain during the peak of Alzheimer’s disease. For example, we found that when a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease is exposed to a neurotoxin, the brain inflammation is raised, and a promising drug made in our lab could essentially reduce this inflammation in this disease model. A postdoctoral fellow in my lab, Dr. Radhika Amaradhi, successfully synthesized a drug while another postdoctoral fellow Dr. Avijit Banik tested the beneficial effects of this drug in the Alzheimer’s disease animal model.

“We found a key (medicine) to the lock (protein) to open the door and explore to see what will happen with a key protein known as EP2 receptor in the brain.”

What was the exciting moment during your research?

We found a key (medicine) to the lock (protein) to open the door and explore to see what will happen with a key protein known as EP2 receptor in the brain. Finding a new medicine for any disease is always challenging. We have made more than 500 new drug molecules to test their effect against brain inflammation. It was exciting to find one of these drugs showing no side effects in the animals and qualified to test for a neurodegenerative disorder. This drug is currently tested in other neurological conditions such as Epilepsy.

What do you hope to do next?

We like to find a cure for Alzheimer’s disease and potentially for all kinds of dementia.

Where do you seek scientific inspiration from?

From peers in biomedical research, who accomplished so much for us, who lead us from fears such as SARS-CoV-2, cancer, diabetes, and cardio diseases to paths and cures.

How do you intend to help Indian science improve?

I like to help scientists and researchers to think big, broad, and beyond. Take the challenges rather than tasks, which lead to great experiences, if not the results.

Reference

Banik A, Amaradhi R, Lee D, Sau M, Wang W, Dingledine R, Ganesh T. Prostaglandin EP2 receptor antagonist ameliorates neuroinflammation in a two-hit mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease. Journal of Neuroinflammation, 2021, 18: 273. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12974-021-02297-7.

Edited by: Manveen K Sethi

Meet the managers

Surabhi Sonam

Surabhi Sonam is an Assistant Professor. Along with teaching and research, she has a very strong interest in science communication. She has written several poems and blogs to communicate scientific principles and concepts. She is also volunteering with several science communication platforms as a content contributor and content editor. Under her supervision, her students have launched a scicomm magazine, Scinion which represents science in verbal and visual forms.

Sejal Dixit

Sejal Dixit is currently a 3rd-year student pursuing BSc triple majors in biotechnology, zoology, and chemistry from CHRIST (Deemed to be University). She loves to read, be it short stories, novels, magazines, or research articles. She is working with her college professor on a few papers, and wishes to pursue her master’s degree in stem cells and regenerative medicines. She has no problem socializing with new people and possesses leadership qualities. Her hobbies are dancing and traveling.

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