Subhra Mohapatra
University of South Florida, FL·Neuroscience
Many people who recover from COVID-19 continue to have neurological problems, a condition called neuro-COVID. Some develop dementia-like symptoms.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Microbiology & Immunology
Pharmacology
- Topics
neuro-COVID
long COVID
SARS-CoV-2
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2029
What they work on
- Test whether age worsens inflammation, tau pathology and long-term cognitive decline in C57BL/6 mice infected with mouse-adapted SARS-CoV-2 (CoV2-MA10), measuring brain damage and behavior.
- Examine how CoV2-MA10 infection speeds tau disease and cognitive decline in PS19 mice, which are engineered to develop tauopathy.
- Identify the mechanisms behind neuro-COVID brain damage using spatial transcriptomics, which maps gene activity across brain tissue in infected mice.
- Validate the roles of FKBP51, a protein-folding regulator, IFI204, an interferon regulator, and other leads by silencing them with nose-delivered dendriplexes that carry short hairpin RNA.
More about the research
One possible cause is tau, a brain protein that clumps abnormally in Alzheimer's disease, a process called tauopathy. Aging also triggers inflammation linked to tau buildup. How the virus that causes COVID-19 drives tau problems is still unknown.
Why it matters
About 15–30% of people infected with COVID-19 report lasting neurological problems, including dementias linked to tau clumping, as in Alzheimer's disease. Identifying and validating targets such as FKBP51 and IFI204 could point toward drugs that prevent or slow tau disease in COVID survivors. This is especially relevant for older adults and people genetically prone to neurodegeneration.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Thomas M Wisniewski
New York University, NY·Medicine & Clinical Research
Compare cognitive and neuropsychological performance yearly over five years among older adults with post-COVID cognitive symptoms, infected adults without symptoms and uninfected controls, using the CDR-SB and Uniform Data Set Version 3.
Xiaohong Lu
Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center-Shreveport, LA·Neuroscience
Determine whether SARS-CoV-2 infection drives chronic loss of smell and cognitive deficits in humanized ACE2 transgenic mice, in a model that produces lasting brain pathology without the virus invading the brain.
Christiana Smith-Anderson
University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus, CO·Microbiology & Immunology
Profile gene expression in maternal and fetal cell types within placentas from pregnancies with HIV, with SARS-CoV-2 or with no infection, using single-cell spatial transcriptomics, which maps gene activity while keeping cells in place in the tissue.
The school
University of South Florida: 20 labs on PI Pages, $522M a year on research, 305 research doctorates a year.
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