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Tissue culture facility provides neuronal cell cultures to investigators Treatment of experimental animals with brain tumors with therapeutic agents Analyzing proteins from neuronal cells upon exposure to neurtropic agents

department of Neuroscience and

center for neurovirology and cancer biology

Research Programs

 

Currently the research programs in the Department of Neuroscience are supported by three program project grants (P01), fourteen individual research grants (R01) and several non-federally funded projects for an annual revenue of $8,489,355 in total costs. Briefly, these grants support three inter-related research programs:

  • Investigation of the interaction of neurotropic viruses including JCV and HIV-1 with glial cells;
  • Mechanism of tumorigenecity in brain, and
  • Signal transduction and neuronal cell dysfunction and survival.

The new Department of Neuroscience will capitalize on the current programs by utilizing existing talent and recruiting several new faculty at various levels to expand the scope of the current programs and to develop four programs (centers) that capture important areas in biomedical neuroscience. As schematized below, these programs are focused on:

  • Molecular and cellular neurovirology
  • Neuro-oncology and neural cell proliferation
  • Neuroimmunology and inflammation
  • Neurodegeneration/regeneration and plasticity

A schematic drawing showing the structure of the Department of Neurovirology


All four programs will utilize molecular and genetic approaches along with experimental animal models and clinical samples to investigate the mechanisms of neural cell function in healthy and disease states, and translate the information for the development of targeted therapeutics. The outcome of these programs will be directly relevant to diseases such as viral-induced neuronal injury including AIDS dementia, brain tumors, and malignancies of the nervous system, multiple sclerosis and neurodegenerative disorders including Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases.


There will be several central core facilities, as outlined in the scheme, which will provide services and state-of-the-art infrastructure to enhance the productivity of the program and promote synergistic interaction among and within the various programs. While the current ongoing program projects support several core facilities such as an Experimental Animal Core, Tissue Culture Core, and Neuropathology Core, it is anticipated that the creation of central core facilities as shown in the diagram will increase the capacity of the existing cores to provide services to a broader group of investigators in neuroscience as well as other departments within the university and will establish additional cores including neuroimaging, proteomics, and immunology. Recently, a grant application seeking support for the central core facilities was submitted to NIH.