Sujatha Kannan

SUJATHA KANNAN is an Associate Professor of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine and Pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University. She holds the Richard J. Traystman Chair of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine Research, and is the Co-Director of the Pediatric Neurocritical Care Program at the Charlotte Bloomberg Children’s Center at Hopkins. Dr. Kannan is a research scientist with the Hugo Moser Research Institute at Kennedy Krieger Institute. Sujatha completed her pediatrics residency and pediatric critical care fellowship at the Children’s hospital of Michigan/Wayne State University. Upon completion of her fellowship training in 2003, she joined the faculty there, where she co-directed the nanotechnology effort at the Perinatology Research Branch. Her research focuses on imaging and targeted therapy for pediatric brain disorders using nanotechnology, with a special emphasis on pediatric neurodevelopmental disorders such as cerebral palsy. Related to this she has developed a rabbit model of cerebral palsy induced by maternal intrauterine endotoxin exposure near-term, demonstrating neuroinflammation and motor deficits in the newborn, with a phenotype as seen in patients with cerebral palsy. She studies the role of inflammation in the developing brain and on manipulating the glial response in the brain following an injury for promoting repair and enabling normal brain development using dendrimer nanoparticles targeted to activated microglia. She has received awards for her research and has authored several patents related to this technology. She has authored more than 50 peer-reviewed publications and 7 patents (issued and pending, all licensed). She is the co-founder of two companies, Ashvattha Therapeutic Inc. and Orpheris Inc., focused on translating this technology for treatment of neuroinflammatory disorders.