Madhan Subramanian

Biographical Statement:

I was born and raised in Karur, a small town in Tamil Nadu, the southernmost state of India. I earned my Bachelor of Veterinary Science (Eq. to DVM) from Madras Veterinary College, Tamil Nadu Veterinary and Animal Sciences University, Chennai in 2006. After completing my bachelor’s, I briefly worked as a research associate at the College of Veterinary Medicine, Chonnam National University, South Korea in 2007. I pursued my Ph.D. from the College of Veterinary Medicine at Michigan State University, Michigan in 2011. After finishing my postdoctoral training at Wayne State University in 2014, I worked as a Lecturer at the School of Veterinary Medicine at University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison until 2017. Later, I joined as an Assistant Professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine at Oklahoma State University, Oklahoma. I got my tenure and promoted to an Associate Professor in 2023.

Research Statement:
The overarching goal of the research in my lab is to understand glial (microglia vs astrocytes) mechanisms behind obesity-induced hypertension. In high fat diet-induced obesity, it has been observed that sympathetic nervous system (a part of the autonomic nervous system) is chronically overactive and has been linked to the development of cardiovascular diseases such as hypertension and heart diseases. We are targeting a number of different pathways that could be involved in mediating sympathetic overactivity namely, 1) cellular senescence (a state of irreversible growth arrest in cells, 2) dysregulation of Nrf2, a master transcriptional regulator of antioxidant and anti-inflammatory pathways and 3) GLP1 signaling in the brain in obesity. The projects in our laboratory are funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), American Heart Association (AHA), and Oklahoma Center for Adult Stem Cell Research (OCASCR).