Dr. Ayanjeet Ghosh has received an early investigator Maximizing Investigator Research Award (MIRA, R35) from NIH.  With the $1.8 million award, Dr. Ghosh will seek to understand how the misfolding and aggregation of amyloid proteins is related to pathogenesis in neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.  Dr. Ghosh’s project will investigate the heterogeneities in protein secondary structure in amyloid aggregates both in-vitro and ex-vivo and identify their relationship with disease progression. Our approach relies on utilizing state-of-the-art nanoscale infrared (IR) spectroscopy and confocal IR spectroscopic imaging to map protein secondary structures in amyloid deposits. We will focus on studying amyloid aggregates and their heterogeneities in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) to develop and optimize our methods, and subsequently aim to extend these strategies to investigate amyloid aggregates in other diseases such as Parkinson’s disease.

Dr. Ghosh is seeking to hire a post-doctoral associate to work on this project.