Professor, Department of Radiology
Professor, Department of Psychiatry
I have over 25 years of experience in the development and application/evaluation of novel PET ligands for translational research to study various disorders and biochemistry and mechanisms of drug action in living humans using PET, where my role is to bridge the fields of chemistry, biology and medicine. I have served as PI in various drug occupancy studies for phase I and phase II clinical trials for drug research and drug development in collaboration with pharmaceutical companies (Pfizer, GSK, etc.). I currently serve as the PI of several imaging grants studying drug mechanisms, obesity, tau and sleep. Our decades-long studies in humans using a norepinephrine transporter (NET) selective radiotracer ([11C]MRB) (>40 publications) have demonstrated a selective vulnerability of the LC-NE system to aging and stress and to various disorders; e.g., cocaine addiction, ADHD, PTSD, obesity, brown fat, diabetes, and cardiovascular dysfunction. My recent preliminary data reveals, for the first time, that the decline rate of NET, normally associated with aging due to loss in NET availability and cell death, is much faster in blacks starting in their mid-30s, particularly in black males. These results led to the novel molecular insight for the mechanistic characterization of the health disparity in aging and Alzheimer's disease, as the current biomarker classification system (i.e., the ATN model) may not fully account for the racial differences in AD risks. We propose that a faster decline of LC-NE function (decreased NET availability), resulting from chronic stress, occurs in blacks in midlife and at preclinical stages of AD and is responsible for the different disease expression among blacks.
212-263-6605
660 First Avenue
Fourth Floor
New York, NY 10016
PhD from State University of New York at Stony Brook
Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY, Positron Emission Tomography (PET) Medical Imaging
RSC medicinal chemistry. 2025 Feb 06;
RSC medicinal chemistry. 2024 Jul 22; 15(9):3147-61
Frontiers in nuclear medicine (Lausanne, Switzerland). 2023 Sep; 3:
Brain sciences. 2022 Oct 26; 12(11):
International journal of innovative research in medical science. 2022 Jun; 7(6):254-271
Obesity surgery. 2021 Nov; 31(11):4868-4876
Annals of clinical & translational neurology. 2020 Oct; 7(10):1908-1918
Journal of biosciences. 2019 Sep; 44(4):