Research Team Members
Neela Patel, MD, MPH, CMD
Neela K. Patel, MD, MPH, CMD, has developed a superb reputation in geriatric care for the care. Dr. Patel and her team have developed a model of integrated care for older adults across all clinical settings including acute care inpatient elder care, skilled nursing care and long-term custodial care, rehabilitation center care and palliative and hospice care called the CARINO Approach. This approach is linked to community resources such as home health agencies, the Alzheimer’s association, senior centers, hospital, consultants and other community resources.
At the Biggs Institute for Alzheimer’s and Neurodegenerative Diseases, Dr. Patel’s role is to develop and implement closely integrated, seamless care patterns across clinicians– ranging from screening in primary care offices, personalized preventive advice, diagnosis and differential diagnosis and developing integrated care plans. She collaborates with team members for supporting community care providers and family caregivers, as behavioral, medical and neurological issues arise, to manage severe dementia, discussion of advance directives and palliative care/hospice care support.
Dr. Patel serves on the Community Advisory Board for the UT Health San Antonio School of NursingCaring for the Caregiver Program. She is also the co-primary investigator with Dr. Carole White on a PCORI – Grant to enhance palliative care and end of life care for persons with dementia where she is an integral part of the grant’s stakeholder advisory council.
Research Areas
Clinical Research
Contact:
Research Profile
Qitao Ran, PhD
Research surrounds the exploration of mitochondria. Mitochondria are organelles with multiple functions essential for neural activities and the dysfunction of which is implicated in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease, especially for sporadic and late-onset cases. Research focuses to illustrate the underlying mechanisms of mitochondrial dysfunction in relation to Alzheimer’s disease and aging, with a goal of identifying novel targets for prevention and treatment of the disease.
Research Areas
Biological & Innovative Research
Contact:
Ran@uthscsa.edu
Research Profile
Muralidharan Sargurupremraj, PhD
Muralidharan Sargurupremraj, PhD, is a geneticist with both statistical and molecular biology experience. Dr. Sargurupremraj is an active member of several large-scale consortiums and lead multiple projects generating primary genetic association evidence for complex neurological, neurodegenerative diseases and their various endophenotypes (white matter hyperintensities, brain infarcts, memory performance, etc.). His specific interest is studying the vascular contribution to Alzheimer’s disease – a common form of dementia that often co-exists with cerebrovascular disease. He is involved in the systematic exploration for biological pleiotropy and causal inference using instrumental variable methods with a specific focus on gene prioritization strategies for augmenting the performance of disease-risk prediction that is based on common genetic variants. Dr. Sargurupremraj is also experienced in the application of multi-omics data to infer cell/tissue type specificity in cerebral small vessel disease (cSVD) both at the bulk and single-cell resolution. His renewed interest is in studying gene-environment interaction by involving epigenetic information and a specific class of genetic elements that transpose in the genome using robust statistical methods particularly in relation to the magnetic resonance imaging markers for cSVD and atrophy.
Research Areas
Population Neuroscience
Contact:
Research Profile