MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS
The MS research in the laboratory includes work on the following patient-centered MS projects:

  • Molecular mechanisms of disease and treatment effects in MS and other demyelinating diseases
  • Therapy optimization
  • Gene expression profiling and proteomics
Demyelination is a hallmark of MS pathogenesis and recent studies have demonstrated that MS is also associated with a significant neurodegenerative component and progressive neuronal loss secondary to the initial inflammatory process. The myelin and CNS neuroprotection and repair research in our group is focused on the following areas:
  • Investigate cellular and molecular mechanisms of myelin formation/repair
  • Screen for and identify therapeutic agents capable of promoting repair and neuroprotection in the CNS.
  • Identification and evaluation of surrogate markers for neuroprotection
  • Pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic studies and modeling for neuroprotective agents
  • Trial design and implementation of Phase II clinical trials of existing neuroprotective agents in MS.

The myelin and CNS neuroprotection and repair research conducted in the laboratory could have applications in a variety of other non-MS neurological disorders ranging from Alzheimer’s disease, leukodystrophies, stroke, and Parkinson’s disease: the ability to promote protection and repair of the CNS will also be critical for treating these debilitating neurological disorders more effectively.
He has also been actively involved in cytokine therapeutics and in aptamer-based approaches (aptamers are nucleic acids that modulate the activity of proteins by interacting with them) to inhibit interferon-gamma, a key inflammatory cytokine.
Dr. Ramanathan research has garnered several awards. He is a recipient of the Whitaker Prize for Multiple Sclerosis Research from the Consortium of Multiple Sclerosis Centers for 2005. His bioinformatics research conducted in collaboration with Dr. Aidong Zhang’s group in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering was judged Best Applications paper Award runner-up at the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) Special Interest Group on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (SIGKDD 2004) meeting in August 2004. The paper was co-authored with Daxin Jiang, Jian Pei, Chun Tang and Aidong Zhang and was titled “Mining Coherent Clusters for Three-Dimensional Microarray Data”.

Murali Ramanathan, PhD

Associate Professor of
Pharmaceutical Sciences
and Neurology

543 Cooke Hall
Dept. of Pharmaceutical Sciences
State University of New York
Buffalo, NY 14260

Ph:  (716)645-2842 ext 242
Fax: (716)645-3693

E-mail: murali@buffalo.edu

Publications