Rahul Srinivasan

Rahul Srinivasan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Neuroscience and Experimental Therapeutics, Texas A&M University, College of Medicine. He received his medical degree from the University of Bombay, India, and a Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh, USA.

During Dr. Srinivasan's postdoctoral training in Henry Lester's lab at the California Institute of Technology from 2007 to 2013, he showed that low doses of nicotine can chaperone neuronal nicotinic acetylcholine receptors out of the endoplasmic reticulum of dopaminergic neurons, thereby reducing the endoplasmic reticulum stress response. This mechanism of action begins to explain the neuroprotective effect of nicotine in Parkinson's disease. After his postdoctoral training, Dr. Srinivasan moved to Dr. Baljit Khakh's lab at the University of California, Los Angeles where he studied calcium signaling in astrocytes from adult brain slices and in vivo.

As an Assistant Professor at Texas A&M University, Dr. Srinivasan uses mouse models of Parkinson's disease to understand sex differences in the neuroprotective effect of the smoking cessation drug, cytisine. This work is funded by an NIH R01 and by the American Parkinson Disease Association. He also focuses on understanding the role of astrocytes in the pathogenesis of Parkinson's disease.