Pranesh Pad­man­abahn

Pranesh Padmanabahn | PORT for Health Neuroscience organized by Łukasiewicz – PORT

Title

Imag­ing-based approach­es for under­stand­ing and treat­ing Alzheimer’s disease 

Abstract

Devel­op­ing effec­tive treat­ments for Alzheimer’s dis­ease (AD) requires a quan­ti­ta­tive under­stand­ing of its under­ly­ing path­o­me­ch­anisms to iden­ti­fy new drug­gable tar­gets and strate­gies to over­come the blood-brain bar­ri­er for improved drug delivery. 

First, I will dis­cuss our ongo­ing imag­ing-based research into how AD patholo­gies trig­ger neu­ro­tox­ic sig­nals at synap­tic con­nec­tions, lead­ing to synap­tic dys­func­tion. In par­tic­u­lar, I will explore the role of synap­tic pro­tein nan­odomains in this process. Next, I will intro­duce our new high-res­o­lu­tion mul­ti­colour imag­ing device, which has revealed a cas­cade of inter­con­nect­ed cel­lu­lar bio­ef­fects that shape dis­tinct cel­lu­lar fates in response to ultra­sound-based treat­ment for drug delivery. 

Biog­ra­phy

Pranesh Pad­man­abahn is an NHM­RC Emerg­ing Lead­er­ship (Lev­el 2) Fel­low at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Queens­land (UQ), where he leads the Mol­e­c­u­lar and Sys­tems Med­i­cine Group. He holds a PhD in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing from the Indi­an Insti­tute of Sci­ence, where he devel­oped mul­ti­scale math­e­mat­i­cal mod­els of infec­tious dis­eases to bet­ter under­stand and improve treat­ment out­comes. Fol­low­ing his PhD, he was award­ed a three-year Post­doc­tor­al Fel­low­ship to join UQ.

His ear­ly research focussed on the com­pu­ta­tion­al prin­ci­ples of brain wiring before tran­si­tion­ing to the use of advanced high-res­o­lu­tion microscopy tech­niques to inves­ti­gate path­o­me­ch­anisms in Alzheimer’s dis­ease. At UQ, his research group inte­grates math­e­mat­i­cal mod­el­ling and advanced quan­ti­ta­tive imag­ing tech­niques to uncov­er the mech­a­nisms dri­ving var­i­ous infec­tious and neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive dis­eases, with the ulti­mate goal of devel­op­ing and opti­mis­ing treatments. 

GROUP LINK: https://​bio​med​ical​-sci​ences​.uq​.edu​.au/​r​e​s​e​a​r​c​h​/​g​r​o​u​p​s​/​m​o​l​e​c​u​l​a​r​-​a​n​d​-​s​y​s​t​e​m​s​-​m​e​d​i​c​ine