Abhisek Mukherjee, PhD

Education

Doctorate Degree

Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, The University of Texas Medical Branch - Galveston, Galveston, TX

Postdoctoral Fellowship

McGovern Medical School at UTHealth - Houston, TX

Areas of Interest

Research Interests

Cellular heterogeneity in brain development and disease; neuronal genomic mosaicism in health and disease; development of tools to understand biology of single cells within their spatial context; leveraging overlapping brain disease mechanisms to identify novel drug targets; cell therapy for brain diseases.

The brain is composed of different cell types such as neuron, astrocyte, microglia and oligodendrocyte. Most of these cell types encompass various sub types. This heterogeneous population of cells orchestrates complex functions including reasoning, judgment, social interaction, and memory, which define us as humans. Our goal is to understand how brain diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD), perturb this symphony between diverse cell types. We envision that restoring these interactions to normalcy will prevent brain malfunction associated with these diseases. The rodent brain differs from human brain with respect to the proportion of different cells, organization and gene expression profile. Additionally, the human genomic landscape makes us specifically susceptible to brain diseases. Remarkable technological advances enable in vitro generation of three-dimensional human brain-like tissue known as brain organoids. Brain organoids can be generated from human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and provide a unique opportunity to study the cellular diversity of the human brain in a dish. In order to understand the function of human brain cells in vivo, we have also developed mouse models harboring human brain cells (chimeric mouse). Using brain organoids and chimeric mice as models, single-cell and spatial transcriptomic techniques as tools, we are studying the role of cellular heterogeneity in brain health and diseases. The following are our current research focus.

1. Understanding the role of cellular heterogeneity in the brain region specific vulnerability associated with AD and Parkinson’s disease (PD).
2. Development of novel tools to investigate the molecular events governing the initiation and spread of protein aggregation pathology associated with AD and PD at single cell resolution.
3. Leveraging the overlapping genetic associations among brain diseases, such as in AD and Schizophrenia to identify novel druggable targets.
4. Understanding the role of genomic mosaicism in the cellular diversity of brain in health and diseases.

Publications

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