Kumar Sambamurti, PhD

JAD profile

Affiliation(s): 

Medical University of South Carolina

Areas of Interest: 

Alzheimer disease, molecular biology, Retinal Degeneration

Biography & Research: 

I am a tenured Professor at the Medical University of South Carolina and have extensive experience in the biochemistry, cellular and molecular biology of Alzheimer’s disease. I am also the Co-Director of the Carroll A. Campbell, Jr. neuropathology laboratory. Dr. Granholm is the other Co-Director of the Neuropathology laboratory. Together, we have collected over 120 human brain samples to date including African American and Early onset Alzheimer’s disease. My laboratory has previously worked extensively on the biology of APP and Aβand has contributed several key discoveries on the regulation and cell biology of the pathway. After joining MUSC, I have teamed with Dr. Granholm to gain considerable experience in the breeding and management of mice and in addressing specific questions in mouse models, including behavior. Over the last 10 years, I have been interested in the environmental and physiological regulators of APP processing that phenocopy familial Alzheimer’s disease mutation with the ultimate goal of reducing AD risk. I was part of a discovery that a homocystinuria mouse model shows increases in Aβ levels. I also co-mentored a PhD student; Javier Pacheco-Quinto, who has extended the discovery to understand the mechanisms by which homocysteine increases Aβ. I have successfully graduated one Ph.D. student (Chitra Venugopal) and three Masters students (Christina Demos, Liu Fang, Robert Baranello) and co-mentored two Ph.D. students (Brice Williams and Javier Pacheco-Quinto) who have all secured excellent post-doctoral fellowships. I have also trained nine post-doctoral fellows who are all well situated in their careers. In addition, I am currently mentoring one graduate student and one post-doctoral fellow. I have developed all the tools required for this study in my laboratory and have excellent collaborators for providing cutting edge help on behavior and neuropathology. I have also developed high quality analytical methods for key biomarkers. Training in my laboratory is geared towards development of detail-oriented scientists who can combine molecular biology, protein biochemistry, cell biology and general anatomy to address key biomedical problems.