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1615 Poydras Street - Suite 1000
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 Li-Ru Zhao, PhD
Louisiana State University Health Sciences – Shreveport Areas of Research: Therapeutic for Neurological Disorders My general interests are to explore therapeutics interventions that reduce neuronal loss, improve functional recovery, and modular mechanisms underlying neuronal protection or regeneration and functional improvements in animal models of stroke and Alzheimer’s disease. Research fields include drug administration, brain plasticity, stem cell transplantation, enriched environment and endogenous stem cell mobilization and stimulation. Our early study has shown that hematopoietic growth factors (SCF and GCSF) prevented neurons from ischemic injury and improved functional outcome when administered in the acute phase after brain ischemia. We also observed that systemic administration of SCR and GCSF in the chronic phase after brain ischemia resulted in significant functional improvement. Our next step will be to determine whether SCF and GCSF-induced functional benefits are associated with neurogenesis, neuroprotection, neurotrophic effects, and neuronal plasticity. We will extend this research to neurodegenerative disease such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. Selected publications Zhao, LR., Navalitloha, Y., Singhal, S., Mehta, J., Kessler, J.A., Piao, C.S., Guo, W.P., and Groothuis, D.R. Hematopoietic growth factors pass through the brain-blood barrier in intact rats. Experimental Neurology, (2007) Kan, L., Zhao, LR., Zhou, X., McGuire, T., Kazanis, I., Episkopou, V., Bassuk, A., and Kessler, J. Sox1 is a proneuronal transcription factor. Development, (2007) Zhao, L.R., Spellman, S., Duan, W.M., McCarthy, J.B., and Low, W.C. Synthetic fibronectin peptide exerts neuroprotective effects on transient focal brain ischemia in rats. Brain Research, (2005) 1054:1-8 Komitova, M., Zhao, L.R., Gido, G., Johnanson, B.B., and Eriksson, P. Postischemic exercise attenuates whereas enriched environment has certain enhancing effects on lesion-induces subventricular zone activation in the adults rat. European Journal of Neuroscience |
