Workshop

Dr. Candice Brown is a tenured Associate Professor in the Department of Neuroscience and Center for Basic and Translational Stroke Research at the West Virginia University School of Medicine. She is also Co-Director of WVU’s Institutional T32 on Stroke and ADRD. Dr. Brown received her PhD in Genetics and Genomics from Duke University and completed postdoctoral training in neuroscience at the University of Washington. The long-term goal of her research program is to understand the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying neuroimmune and neurovascular interactions through the lens of sex differences. Current research in her laboratory focuses on the role of alkaline phosphatases at the blood-brain and gut-vascular barriers in mouse models of ischemic stroke, sepsis, and Alzheimer's disease. She is currently funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Helen M. Willis Foundation.

Nestor Gonzalez, MD, accomplished a unique training with two completed residencies in neurosurgery and radiology, fellowship training in interventional neuroradiology (neuroendovascular surgery) and a masters of science in clinical research. This allowed him to become one of the leaders in the country in the development of clinical and translational research in the cerebrovascular field. Dr. Gonzalez is the principal investigator on several NIH and American Heart Association grants, including three science innovation awards of the AHA. He is currently the principal investigator of the EDAS Surgical Revascularization for Symptomatic Intracranial Arterial Stenosis (ERSIAS) trial, funded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke of the NIH. Dr.Gonzalez's original research has received several awards including the Oppenheimer Research Award and the Ruth and Raymond Stotter Chair Endowment by the UCLA School of Medicine. Dr. Gonzalez conducted the studies that have led to the use of EDAS revascularization as an alternative treatment for adult patients with cerebral arterial steno-occlusive disorders, including moyamoya and ICAS and has been an investigator of the trials that have defined the modern management of acute ischemic stroke, including the MERCI and SWIFT Trials.

Preclinical perspective on the role the blood-brain barrier plays in ischemic stroke and recovery

For the past 20+ years,  Dr. Huber has explored how the blood-brain barrier responds to disease & injury. During this time, his team has reported marked changes in BBB structure & function in response to peripheral pain, diabetes, traumatic brain injury and ischemic stroke. Over the past 15+ years, Dr. Huber's team have developed & validated a fibrin clot-induced middle cerebral artery occlusion preclinical model of ischemic stroke with reperfusion that utilizes aged rats. Using this model, they have demonstrated that age is a significant risk factor for severity of brain damage following stroke that is often overlooked or discounted in other models. Their research has shown that mechanisms underlying ischemic/reperfusion brain injury are different in aged rats than younger rats and the blood-brain barrier, as part of a larger functional unit known as the neurovascular unit, plays a vital role in ischemic brain injury and recovery following stroke. 

Christopher Kellner, MD, is an Assistant Professor in Neurosurgery specializing in the endovascular and minimally invasive treatment of different forms of stroke, aneurysms, arteriovenous malformations, dural arteriovenous fistulas, cavernous malformations, and other vascular problems of the brain and spine. He is Director of the Intracerebral Hemorrhage Program and Principal Investigator of the Cerebrovascular Translational Laboratory and serves as Associate Director of the Neurosurgery Residency Program.  His research focuses on improving outcomes in endoscopic minimally invasive intracerebral hemorrhage evacuation, decreasing brain inflammation after stroke, early diagnosis of stroke, and early diagnosis of cerebral aneurysms. He is the principal investigator of the VITAL study, a multicenter clinical trial evaluating the VIPS device, which is a non-invasive, portable, easy-to-use severe stroke detection device that can be used in the ambulance to correctly diagnose severe stroke to triage patients to the right hospital.

Dr Jenny Tsai is a neurointerventionalist and vascular neurologist at the Cleveland Clinic. Dr. Tsai completed her clinical vascular neurology fellowship and neuroimaging research fellowship at Stanford University, and her neuroendovascular interventions fellowship at the Cleveland Clinic. With a research interest rooted in perfusion imaging in stroke, she contributed in expanding patient eligibility for neuroendovascular treatment in stroke through several landmark clinical trials, including DEFUSE 3 and SELECT 2. She has served as a member of the Society of NeuroInterventional Surgery's Board of Directors since 2019.

Professor Tymianski is a neurosurgeon and Senior Scientist, a Professor in the Dept of Surgery at the University of Toronto, and a Canada Research Chair in Translational Stroke Research. For 30 years he was a cerebrovascular and skull base neurosurgeon at the University of Toronto, where he was Chief of Neurosurgery at the University Health Network for 9 years. His most advanced scientific contribution is the development of PSD95 inhibitors, beginning with the discovery that PSD95, an abundant synaptic protein, is a therapeutic target for neurodegeneration. In 2012, Tymianski and his team published the first clinical trial supportive of neuroprotection by the PSD-95 inhibitor, nerinetide, in humans. His team completed the phase 3 ESCAPE-NA1 trial (NCT02930018) in 2020 and is  currently conducting two further phase 3 trials of nerinetide, namely FRONTIER (NCT02315443) and ESCAPE-NEXT (NCT04462536), with the latter recruiting up to 850 subjects globally.