Anant patel's group

About ANANT

Dr. Anant B. Patel obtained his master in Chemistry with Physical Chemistry specialization from Department of Chemistry, Banaras Hindu University in 1993 and Ph. D. in Chemistry entitled "NMR Studies of Biomolecular Systems" from the Department of Chemical Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundmamental Research / Mumbai University, Mumbai in 1999. He was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Magnetic Resonance Research Centre (MRRC), Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA from 1999-2003. He served as Associate Research Scientist at Yale MRRC from 2003-2006.

He joined the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad as a senior scientist in June 2006. He has started in vivo NMR imaging and spectroscopy program in the institute and carrying out research in the field of in vivo NMR spectroscopy. His research interests are in trying to understand metabolic basis of various diseases/disorders related with nervous system. One major area of focus in his laboratory is in understanding how excitatory and inhibitory neurotransmission are affected during normal ageing and in Alzeimer's disease. The other areas of research in his laboratory include understanding the brain energy metabolism in diabetes and identify the biomarker for the diagnosis of liver diseases.
Research Interest

Glutamate and gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) are the major excitatory and inhibitory neurotransmitter, in central nervous system. It is well established that a neuronal astrocytic neurotransmitter cycle exists in the brain. In this cycle, neurotransmitter glutamate released from neurons into the synaptic cleft is taken up by astrocytes, converted to glutamine, and returned to neurons in this synaptic inactive form. In neurons glutamine is hydrolyzed to glutamate and re-packaged into vesicles, and ready for the next release. Similarly, GABA released from the inhibitory neurons also may be taken up by astrocytes, converted to glutamate and recycled to GABAergic neurons in the same way. This cycle is called neurotransmitter (glutamate/glutamine, GABA/glutamine) cycle. We have developed stable 13C isotope technique to quantify energetics of glutamaterigc and GABAergic neurotransmission in rodent brain in vivo.

Our current research work is focused on to understand the metabolic basis of various diseases related with central nervous system. The major goals of our studies are following:

1. Identify the atrophy in different brain regions during normal ageing and at various stage of Alzheimer's disease in mouse model.

2. Measure quantitatively the effects of normal ageing and Alzheimer's disease on the concentrations of the major cerebral metabolites specific to neuronal and astroglial cell in mouse model.

3. Determine the effects of normal ageing and Alzheimer's disease on the eneregics of glutamatergic (excitatory neuron), GABAergic neurons (inhibitory neuron) and astroglia.

4. Understand the role of caloric restricted diet and memory enhancing dugs in brain atrophy, cerebral metabolites and neurotransmitter energetics during normal ageing and in Alzheimer's disease.

5. Investigate cerebral metabolism in mouse model of diabetes.

6. Develop non-invasive NMR method for studying hepatic, diabetes, etc. diseases.