Opportunities for fellow research in neural injury and repair are excellent. The NPRI has a fully equipped laboratory within the Multidisciplinary Neuroprotection Laboratory and has access to any of the techniques or models used. This program encompasses a number of models of central nervous system injury including stroke, head injury and hypoxic ischemia injury in neonatal rats and mice. The fellow will have access to laboratory facilities to investigate basic mechanism of acute brain injury and potential pharmacologic interventions using whole animal and molecular biology techniques.

Daniel Laskowitz, M.D., Associate Professor of Medicine and Neurobiology

Dr. Laskowitz’s laboratory uses molecular biology, cell culture, and animal modeling techniques to examine the CNS response to acute injury. In particular, his laboratory examines the role of microglial activation and the endogenous CNS inflammatory response in exacerbating the secondary injury following acute brain insult. Much of the in vitro work in his laboratory is dedicated to elucidating cellular responses to injury with the ultimate goal of exploring new therapeutic interventions in the clinical setting of stroke, intracranial hemorrhage, and closed head injury. In conjunction with the Multidisciplinary Neuroprotection Laboratories, he also focuses on clinically relevant small animal models of acute CNS injury. The laboratory uses murine models of closed head injury, subarachnoid hemorrhage, intracranial hemorrhage, and perinatal hypoxia-ichemia, in addition to the standard rodent models of focal stroke and transient forebrain ischemia. Recently he has adapted several of these models from the rat to the mouse to take advantage of the murine transgenic technology.

James McNamara, M.D., Carl R. Deane Professor of Neuroscience, and Chair, Department of Neurobiology, Professor of Medicine and Director, Center for Translational Neuroscience

Dr. McNamara's research is centered on elucidating the molecular mechanisms of epileptogenesis, the process by which a normal brain becomes epileptic. Insight into the molecular mechanisms will provide novel targets for development of therapies aimed at prevention of epilepsy or limiting its progression.

David Warner, M.D., Professor of Anesthesiology, Neurobiology and Surgery

 

Dr. Warner is a mentor for stroke, cerebral vasospasm, and head injury. Dr. Warner’s Multidisciplinary Neuroprotective Laboratory is dedicated to examining the pathophysiologic basis of and therapeutic modalities for treatment of these disorders. In vivo rodent models are established with requisite physiologic control. Experimental techniques include intracerebral microdialysis, neurochemistry, electrophysiology, measurement of cerebral blood flow and metabolic rate, neurohistology, image analysis, and neurobehavior. In vitro techniques include use of primary neuronal cultures and organotypic hippocampal slices in assays of excitotoxicity and calcium transients. Therapeutic protocols examine effects of anesthetic agents, induced hypothermia, excitatory neurotransmitter antagonists, free radical scavengers, and allosteric modulators of hemoglobin affinity for oxygen on outcome from brain injury. Transgenic and knockout murine models are used to examine the roles of human apolipoprotein E isoforms and human extracellular superoxide dismutase in global and focal cerebral ischemia and head injury.