Avik Roy
Neuroscientist who studies brain inflammation in Parkinson's disease and now leads research on ME/CFS as Chief Scientific Officer of the nonprofit Simmaron Research
Chief Scientific Officer and Section Chief, Neurobiology, Simmaron Research · Adjunct Professor and member, Milwaukee Institute for Drug Discovery, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (since 2024) · Assistant Professor, Department of Neurobiology, Rush University Medical Center · PhD in neuroscience, Rush University Medical Center, Chicago
ME/CFS (myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome) is a long-lasting illness with severe fatigue that gets worse after effort, and it has no approved treatment. Avik Roy was senior author of a 2026 pilot study in the Journal of Translational Medicine (GIL2026) in which people with ME/CFS took low-dose rapamycin, the classic mTOR blocker. Fatigue went down. In blood plasma from the patients who responded, purine chemicals (building blocks of DNA and of energy carriers) shifted in a way that fits lower activity of the enzyme IMP dehydrogenase in their white blood cells. Lab experiments then suggested that altered purines can weaken mitochondria and push microglia, the brain's immune cells, into an inflammatory state.
The study was observational, without a placebo group, so it cannot show that rapamycin caused the improvement. The mitochondrial and microglial effects come from lab assays and were not measured in the patients.
Roy earned a PhD in neuroscience at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago and has been an assistant professor in its Department of Neurobiology. Much of the earlier work concerned glial activation and inflammation in Parkinson's disease, including the finding that loss of the gene for the protein BPOZ2 contributes to Lewy body pathology and the death of dopamine neurons, which won a Rapid Response Innovation Award from the Michael J. Fox Foundation. Roy is now Chief Scientific Officer and head of neurobiology at Simmaron Research, a nonprofit that studies ME/CFS, and since 2024 an adjunct professor and member of the Milwaukee Institute for Drug Discovery at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Milestones in the Atlas
A selection, not a full bibliography: only papers that meet the Atlas inclusion criteria.
| Year | Evidence | Study |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 | H | Association of rapamycin treatment with the modulation of purine metabolism, reduced microglial inflammatory responses, improved mitochondrial energy metabolism, and alleviation of fatigue symptoms in ME/CFS subjects: pilot findings from phase-II observational study GIL2026 Senior author: led the uncontrolled pilot linking low-dose rapamycin to lower fatigue and shifted purine metabolism in people with ME/CFS. |
Co-authors in the Atlas 1
People with a profile here who share at least one study with Avik Roy.
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- Brooke Gile Researcher in Simmaron Research's laboratory in Milwaukee who works on low-dose rapamycin as a possible treatment for ME/CFS and led the 2026 analysis of its effects on purine metabolism
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