Narayan R. Bhat, Ph.D.

Professor, Neurology and Physiology & Neuroscience,
Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston SC.

Phone: (843)
Fax: (843)
Email: bhatnr@satchel.musc.edu

Research Interests:

The current research interests of our laboratory (supported by NIH and other grants) focus on the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying:

• Central nervous system (CNS) myelination and demyelination
• Neuroinflammation that characterizes degenerative diseases/conditions such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis (MS), stroke and spinal cord injury.
  Specific projects utilize primary cell culture and animal models (i.e., mutant / knockout and induced) to investigate signal transduction mechanisms, in particular, MAP kinase cascades, that regulate:
• the development, differentiation and death of oligodendrocytes - a specialized glial cell type that is responsible for the formation and maintenance of CNS myelin and also the target of immune attack in MS.
• the activation and inflammatory responses of astrocytes and microglia, the two immune-regulatory cells of the CNS.

In addition, we are interested in neuroglial stem cells with respect to their lineage determination, malignant transformation (gliomagenesis) due to dysregulated growth factor signaling as well as their potential utility in CNS gene trans

Selected Recent Publications:

Bhat NR, Feinstein DL, Shen Q, Bhat AN. p38 MAPK-mediated transcriptional activation of inducible nitric oxide synthase in glial cells: roles of nuclear factors, NFkb, CREB, C/EBP and ATF-2. J Biol Chem 2002; 277:29584-29592.

Bhat NR, Fan F. Adenovirus infection induces microglial activation: Involvement of mitogen-activated protein kinase pathways. Brain Res 2002; 948:93-101.

Bhat NR, Zhang P, Lee JC and Hogan EL. Extracellular signal-regulated kinase and p38 subgroups of mitogen-activated protein kinases regulate inducible nitric oxide synthase and tumor necrosis factor-a gene expression in endotoxin-stimulated primary glial cultures. J Neurosci 1998; 18:1633-1641.

Andrews T, Zhang P and Bhat NR. TNFa potentiates IFNg-induced cell death in ligodendrocyte progenitors. J Neurosci Res 1998; 54:574-583.

Bhat NR, Zhang P. Activation of MAP kinases in oligodendrocytes. J Neurochem 1996; 66:1986-1994.

Zhang P, Miller BS, Rosenzweig SA, Bhat NR. Activation of c-Jun N-terminal kinase/stress-activated protein kinase in primary glial cultures. J Neurosci Res 1996;46:114-121.