Fanny Elahi, MD, PhD

Fanny Elahi is a physician-scientist and Associate Professor of Neurology, Neuroscience, and Pathology, Molecular and Cell-Based Medicine. Elahi completed medical school and a doctorate in neurogenetics, residency in neurology, and fellowship in neurodegenerative disorders to gain multi-disciplinary domain knowledge, clinical, scientific and technical skills required to build a therapeutically-oriented translational research program in neurodegenerative diseases.

Guided by a commitment to patient care, the Elahi Lab leverages clinical insights to design laboratory research to uncover molecular links between disease of the brain’s vascular system with neurodegeneration. We aim to treat dementia by understanding the role of blood vessels in human brain function and the genetic causes of vascular pathology across the lifespan that may cause a spectrum of dementia-related diseases. The Elahi Lab’s multidisciplinary approach combines deep clinical, cellular, and molecular phenotyping to model disease, identify early biomarkers and find therapeutic targets for vascular brain dysfunction and degeneration. We focus on human tissue and biospecimen for discovery of molecular dysregulations and modeling mechanisms in iPSC-derived multi-cellular in vitro models. Much of the work underway is centered on genetic risk for degenerative brain disorders, such as CADASIL, an autosomal dominant disease that causes vascular cognitive impairment (VCI), and APOE4, the most prevalent risk allele for Alzheimer’s disease. The Elahi Lab welcomes incoming rotation students interested in related wet lab, dry lab, and computational projects. For more information: elahilab.com