Gayathri Ramaswamy

Biography

Gayathri Ramaswamy, PhD, is a Lab Head, Senior Principal Scientist at Pfizer’s Neuroscience Research Unit. She is currently leading two drug discovery programs for treating neurodegenerative diseases. The apolipoprotein E program is pursuing apolipoprotein E as a therapeutic target for Alzheimer’s disease and the glucocerebrosidase program is focused on glucocerebrosidase as a target for treating Parkinson’s disease. Other areas of research in her laboratory include understanding the underlying mechanisms that regulate apolipoprotein E in the brain, mechanistic role of apolipoprotein E4 in Alzheimer's disease, delineating the effect of apolipoprotein E isoforms in traumatic brain injury and investigating tau as a therapeutic target for Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative diseases. Dr. Ramaswamy obtained her PhD from St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, University of Tennessee (Memphis) and did her post-doctoral training at Gladstone Institute of Neurological Diseases, University of California San Francisco. She has co-authored several peer-reviewed publications and patents, with more than 18 years of experience in lipid metabolism and is considered an expert in apolipoprotein E and its role in Alzheimer's disease. She has made seminal contributions to understanding the underlying mechanism(s) by which apolipoprotein E contributes to Alzheimer's disease. Additionally, Dr. Ramaswamy is an expert in small molecule phenotypic screen deconvolution, molecular biology and cell biology. She has also developed reagents for identifying bio-threat agents (Department of Homeland Security) and for evaluating target gene expression.

Research Interest

neurodegenerative diseases