Neurological Disorders

Krikor Dikranian

Krikor Dikranian, MD, PhD
Associate Professor, Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology
Washington University School of Medicine Saint Louis, MO, USA Read Interview session with Krikor Dikranian

Biography

Dr. Dikranian is an Associate Professor of the Department of Anatomy & Neurobiology in Washington University , USA. He received his MD from Medical University, Varna, Bulgaria in 1978 & PhD from Medical Academy, Sofia, Bulgaria in 1992.

Dr. Dolranian have extensively studied the morphology of the vascular and nervous systems including the enteric nervous system. In the last 15 years the focus of his scientific interest has been the pathomorphology of the central and peripheral nervous systems. I have performed morphological studies in this system in close collaboration with the departments of Psychiatry, Neurology, Ophthalmology, Cell Biology and Biomedical Engineering. In ongoing projects with the Department of Neurology I am studying the development of neuronal and axonal changes after brain trauma and in transgenic mice expressing mutations common in Alzheimer’s disease. Mapping the human macro-connectome represents a grand challenge for the coming century and the field of connectomics received a major boost with the launching of the Human Connectome Project (HCP) in 2010. This is a large-scale NIH-sponsored effort to map the human connectome in healthy adults. A very big portion of this project is performed in the Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology at Washington University School of Medicine in Saint Louis under the leadership of Dr. David van Essen, one of the Principal Investigators. Diffusion imaging and resting-state fMRI represent the two main modalities for examining the macro-connectome in vivo. My contribution to the project relates to combining and navigating MRI data with data from histological studies on primates by tracking trajectories of axonal pathways between the white matter and gray matter.

He has been a reviewer for many reputed Journal & author for many publications & books.

Research Interest

Pharmacology, morphology and reactivity of the vascular endothelium. Synthesis and secretion of endothelium-derived vasoactive and growth factors. Research in the vascular endothelium, vascular smooth muscle cells and the vascular wall matrix of macro- and microvessels of the lung, heart, CNS and digestive system.

Morphology & reactivity of CNS neurons and glia. Effect of NMDA antagonists on cortical neurons. Neurotoxic effects of drugs of abuse on cells on the central nervous system. Neuronal cell apoptosis and its regulation by trophic factors and receptors. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative diseases of the central and peripheral nervous systems.

Head trauma and injury to the CNS – morphological studies on the nature and progression of trauma-induced neurodegeneration. Human connectome – morphological and comparative structural and MRI studies of axonal trajectories in primate cortex.

Adult neurogenesis and vessel interactions, collaborative research project with Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories, NY (Dr. G. Enikolopov).