Sowmya Yelamanchili
University of Nebraska Medical Center, NE·Neuroscience
Combination antiretroviral therapy (cART) has turned HIV infection from a fatal illness into a manageable chronic disease. Even so, many people with HIV still develop HIV-associated neurocognitive disorder (HAND), a decline in thinking and memory.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Microbiology & Immunology
Pharmacology
- Topics
HIV-associated neurocognitive disorder
methamphetamine
substance use
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2027
What they work on
- Examine neuron function and damage to synapses and mitochondria caused by combined HIV infection and methamphetamine exposure in 3D cerebral organoids containing microglia, the brain's immune cells.
- Investigate the role of extracellular vesicles, tiny packages cells release to communicate, in microglia-containing organoids treated with HIV and methamphetamine.
- Characterize the molecular mechanisms of HIV-induced neuron injury using single-cell RNA sequencing and CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing, and test the organoid model as a tool to identify molecular signatures of HAND.
More about the research
One likely reason is that HIV hides in microglia and macrophages, immune cells in the brain, where the drugs penetrate unevenly. Methamphetamine (meth), a powerful stimulant misused by an estimated 30 million people worldwide, makes the therapy less effective and worsens brain damage. How HIV and meth together harm the brain remains poorly understood.
Why it matters
People living with HIV, especially those who use methamphetamine, are at risk of HIV-associated neurocognitive disorder despite effective antiviral drugs. A reliable human mini-brain model and newly identified injury pathways could help researchers understand this disorder and could inform the design of new therapies to control HIV infection in the brain.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Subhash Chand
University of Nebraska Medical Center, NE·Pharmacology
Test whether cannabidiol (CBD) reduces NLRP3 inflammasome activation, a key inflammation switch, in human monocyte-derived microglia exposed to HIV and methamphetamine, measuring gene expression from RNA and protein.
Prasun K Datta
Tulane University of Louisiana, LA·Microbiology & Immunology
Test whether age and lactate-driven histone lactylation worsen neurocognitive disease by measuring plasma and cerebrospinal fluid lactate, MRI-based spatial memory, and prefrontal and temporal lobe lactylation in young versus old SIV-infected macaques on antiretroviral therapy.
Annie Kathuria
Johns Hopkins University, MD·Neuroscience
Build a longitudinal dataset of spontaneous and stimulated electrical activity, recorded with multi-electrode arrays, from 75 cerebral organoids grown from schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and control cells, from day 90 to day 270.
The school
University of Nebraska Medical Center: 20 labs on PI Pages, $657M a year on research, 82 research doctorates a year.
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