Neuroscience - Joint Faculty

I am involved in studying the dopaminergic and neuroprotective aspects of retinal pigment epithelial cell derived and other stem cells pertinent to the experimental therapeutics for Parkinson’s disease. In these I am conducting some gene therapy experiments to optimize dopamine secretion from these cells. I am also interested in understanding the proteomic and genomic changes when RPE cell is transdifferentiated into neurons to be used for transplantation therapy for treatment of Parkinson’s disease.

I am also interested in studying the immune privileged properties of retinal pigment epithelial cells to understand why the RPE grafts are not getting rejected when transplanted into the brain. This will give insight to the understanding of what all molecules contribute to the immune tolerance of RPE cells and how these cells survive without immunosuppression.