Salman Bhai, M.D.

Leadership: Director of the Neuromuscular Center at the Institute of Exercise and Environmental Medicine (IEEM) at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas.

Clinical Interests: Dr. Bhai specializes in the evaluation, diagnosis, and treatment of neuromuscular disorders. He specifically focuses on patients with inflammatory and metabolic myopathies as well as those with immune checkpoint inhibitor complications.

Research: His research focuses on understanding how muscles communicate with other organ systems, particularly when muscle is inflamed, like in myositis. The goal of his research is to better understand, diagnose, and treat patients with myositis. This will be achieved through exercise and muscle physiology studies of myositis patients by analyzing biospecimens for molecular perturbations. He also works to offer clinical trials for myositis patients.

Clinical Trials: site PI on two metabolic myopathy trials sponsored by Reneo Pharmaceuticals

Research PI: muscle signaling in inflammatory conditions, physiological and immune perturbations in inflammatory myopathies

Research collaborations: immune molecular phenotyping in checkpoint inhibitor complications (David Gerber – UTSW lab), biomarkers of muscle damage (Ning Liu, Lin Xu – UTSW)

Trainee Education: Dr. Bhai is dedicated to neurologic medical education. During his neurology residency, he worked to create a multi-modal curriculum for internal medicine residents and lead the implementation of the program. He also dedicated his time to teach parts of the curriculum. He continues to work with medical students, neurology residents, and neuromuscular fellows to further neurology education.

Background: He earned his B.S. in mathematics at Duke University and his M.D. from Harvard Medical School, where he earned multiple research grants including the Bertarelli Fellowship and a Wilderness Medicine Society grant. He completed his internship, neurology residency, and neuromuscular fellowship at Harvard: internship at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and residency and fellowship in a joint program between Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital.