After graduation from medical school in 2008, Dr. Faridar gained extensive experiences of running translational research projects as a research fellow and post-doctoral scholar in prestigious institutes in Europe and the USA. His effort as a post-doctoral research scholar in neuroscience department at UCSF culminated in developing a new blood biomarker in Autism. In 2013, Dr. Faridar joined the Neurology Residency Program at the Houston Methodist Neurological Institute. During his residency and subsequent fellowship, he worked on Alzheimer’s disease under the mentorship of Drs. Joseph Masdeu and Stanley H. Appel. He is particularly interested in evaluating the inflammation and potential immunotherapy in Alzheimer disease. Dr. Faridar is a recipient of the prestigious “BrightFocus Alzheimer Disease Research Fellowship” and “Alzheimer’s Association Part-The-Cloud” Awards and has published over 26 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters.

Inflammation is a significant component of neurodegenerative disorder including Alzheimer’s disease. From his research during residency through to his current role as assistant professor of neurology, Dr. Faridar has assessed inflammatory signaling cascades in neurodegenerative process. One of his major contributions in this area is studying the status of the adaptive immune system in Alzheimer’s disease and its role as a potential therapeutic target. Regulatory T cells (Tregs) play a neuroprotective role by suppressing microglia/macrophage-mediated inflammation and modulating adaptive immune reactions. Dr. Faridar and his team observed that Tregs of Alzheimer’s disease patients lose their ability to suppress inflammation. However, these dysfunctional Tregs might be a restorable therapeutic target. Based on this finding, Dr. Faridar and his team are conducting a phase I/IIa study to assess the safety and potential efficacy of an in vivo Treg expansion strategy in Alzheimer’s disease patients with promising preliminary findings.