Manideep Chavali
Oregon Health & Science University, OR·Neuroscience
Nerve fibers in the brain are wrapped in myelin, a fatty insulation that lets electrical signals travel fast. In babies born very early, or born at term after complications such as restricted growth in the womb, placental separation, or oxygen deprivation at birth, this white matter is often damaged.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Physiology
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
neonatal white matter injury
myelination
oligodendrocytes
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Apr 2031
What they work on
- Dissect how oligodendrocyte progenitor cells, the precursors of myelin-forming cells, regulate apelin signaling in the endothelial cells lining brain blood vessels, during normal white matter development and after neonatal hypoxic-ischemic injury, using genetic and pharmacological strategies.
- Determine how endothelial apelin signaling controls cerebrovascular tone, the constriction state of brain vessels, as well as glucose uptake and new vessel growth in developing white matter and after neonatal hypoxic-ischemic injury.
- Test how brain-wide hypoglycemia, low blood sugar, affects myelination and the metabolic pathways of oligodendrocytes in normal development and after neonatal hypoxic-ischemic injury.
- Establish whether the oligodendroglia-endothelial metabolic crosstalk pathway can be targeted to protect white matter in models of neonatal injury.
More about the research
That damage, called neonatal white matter injury, is a leading cause of lasting motor and thinking difficulties. Too little oxygen and altered blood flow before and around birth disrupt myelination, but exactly how is not fully understood. Building myelin is metabolically expensive, so it depends on a well-developed blood vessel network delivering enough blood, oxygen and fuel.
Why it matters
Neonatal white matter injury is a leading cause of motor and cognitive deficits in children born preterm. Identifying how myelin-forming cells and brain blood vessels exchange metabolic support could reveal protective mechanisms against disrupted blood flow and oxygen delivery, and could eventually point to treatments that improve long-term neurodevelopment for children affected by neonatal hypoxic-ischemic brain injury, pediatric stroke, preterm birth and other birth complications.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Jiangyang Zhang
New York University, NY·Biomedical Engineering
Develop diffusion MRI methods that measure tissue microstructure and water exchange between inside and outside of cells in a neonatal mouse model of hypoxic ischemic injury, and validate them against histology.
Shabnam Peyvandi
University of California-San Francisco, CA·Medicine & Clinical Research
Test whether lower brain tissue oxygen before birth leads to immature brain development in fetuses with transposition of the great arteries, using fetal neuroimaging to find a prenatal marker of poor brain maturation.
William S Talbot
Stanford University, CA·Neuroscience
Determine how newly identified positive and negative regulators of myelination control the wrapping of nerve fibers by oligodendrocytes during development, neural plasticity and remyelination, using zebrafish genetics and cellular analysis.
The school
Oregon Health & Science University: 24 labs on PI Pages, $545M a year on research, 54 research doctorates a year.
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