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Editorial Board

Editors-in-Chief

Lester R Drewes, PhD, University of Minnesota, USA
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Lester Drewes is currently Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Minnesota Duluth Medical School, directs the Academic Health Center Duluth graduate programs, and chairs the Brain Barriers Research Center advisory committee.  Following Ph.D. studies at the University of Minnesota (1970), Dr. Drewes conducted postdoctoral research with Professor David D. Gilboe at the University of Wisconsin in the area of neuroscience and in 1976 began his academic career at the University of Minnesota School of Medicine in Duluth.  In 1992, Dr. Drewes co-hosted with A. Lorris Betz, MD the first CVB conference in Duluth and served as President of the International Brain Barriers Society from 2006 to 2017.  Dr. Drewes is the recipient of a number of awards including the Javits Neuroscience Investigator Award by the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke.  He currently serves on the editorial boards of biochemical and neurochemical journals and on several review panels.  Dr. Drewes lists fourteen review chapters, one book and more than 100 peer reviewed publications and a similar number of meeting presentations and seminars.
Email: ldrewes@d.umn.edu

Mark Hamilton, MDCM, FRCSC, FAANS, University of Calgary, Canada 
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Dr. Mark G Hamilton, MDCM, FRCSC, FAANS, is from the University of Calgary, Cumming School of Medicine, Department of Clinical Neurosciences, Division of Neurosurgery. Dr. Hamilton did his Bachelor of Science degree (with distinction) at the University of Toronto and then graduated from McGill University Medical School in 1983. He did his Neurosurgery Residency at the University of Calgary and received his FRCSC in 1991. He did Fellowship training in the cerebrovascular, skull base, and pediatric Neurosurgery at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, Arizona, and joined the University of Calgary Department of Clinical Neurosciences in 1994, where he is currently a Professor of Neurosurgery with additional appointments in the Department of Surgery and the Department of Pediatrics. He was the Chief of the Division of Pediatric Neurosurgery from 2002-2011. He is head of the University of Calgary Adult Hydrocephalus Program, which he established with the University of Calgary Adult Hydrocephalus Clinic in 2008. Dr. Hamilton is the chair of the Adult Hydrocephalus Clinical Research Network (AHCRN), which has eight clinical sites in three countries, Past-President of the Hydrocephalus Society (International Society for Hydrocephalus and Cerebrospinal Fluid Disorders (ISHCSF)), a member of the Board of Directors of the Hydrocephalus Association (HA), Vice-Chair of the Medical Advisory Board (MAB) of HA, a member of the Board of Directors of Hydrocephalus Canada,  and a member of the Medical Advisory Board of Hydrocephalus Canad. He has been a past co-chair of the Journal of Neurosurgery Editorial Board and is a member of the Editorial Boards of Neurosurgery and the Canadian Journal of Neurological Sciences. His current main clinical and research interests are diagnosing and managing hydrocephalus in adults.
Email: mghamilton.hydro@gmail.com

Richard F Keep, PhD, University of Michigan, USA
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Richard F. Keep, Ph.D. is a Professor in the Department of Neurosurgery and in the Department of Molecular and Integrative Physiology at the University of Michigan. He is also Director of the Crosby Neurosurgical Laboratories and Associate Chair for Research in Neurosurgery. His main research areas are transport at the blood-brain and blood-CSF barriers, effects of neurological disorders on the barriers, and hemorrhagic and ischemic brain injury (stroke).
Email: rkeep@med.umich.edu
 

Founding Editor

Hazel C Jones, PhD, King's College London, UK 
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Hazel Jones is Visiting Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, King's College London and lately Courtesy Research Professor, Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics, University of Florida. She received a BSc degree in Physiology (University College London), MSc in pharmacology (Oxford) and PhD in Zoology (University of Hull). From 1991 she was Research Professor at the University of Florida. During her career she researched on comparative and developmental aspects of cerebrospinal fluid circulation, brain electrolyte homeostasis, and rodent models of inherited congenital hydrocephalus. In 2004 she returned to the UK and started as Editor in Chief of the journal Fluids and Barriers of the CNS (previously Cerebrospinal Fluid Research), a role in which she served till 2023.
Email: hazelcjones@btinternet.com 

Honorary Advisors

Gert Fricker, PhD, University of Heidelberg, Germany 
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Dr Gert Fricker is Professor at the Ruprecht-Karls University of Heidelberg and Director of the Institute of Pharmacy and Molecular Biotechnology. He studied chemistry and medicine at the University of Freiburg, Germany and received his PhD in biochemistry. His research interests are drugs transporters in epithelial and endothelial barriers, as well as drug targeting and novel drug delivery systems.


Margareta Hammarlund-Udenaes, PhD, Uppsala University, Sweden 
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Dr Hammarlund-Udenaes is Professor of Pharmacokinetics and Pharmacodynamics since 1999, since 2021 Professor Emerita. She received her Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Sciences in 1984 from Uppsala University. She has supervised 22 PhD’s and published more than 140 original articles. She became an AAPS Fellow in 2005. Her research is focused on the pharmacokinetics of blood-brain barrier transport of drugs in relation to central effects and side-effects. The influence of drug transport processes on drug delivery to the brain is theoretically as well as experimentally studied with microdialysis, PET and other methods. In vitro methods and new concepts for brain drug delivery are developed based on in vivo principles.
E-mail: mhu@farmaci.uu.se

Conrad E Johanson, PhD, Brown University, USA
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Dr. Conrad Johanson is Professor of Neurosurgery at the Brown University Medical School in Providence, Rhode Island. His basic transport research encompasses comparative analyses of the blood-CSF interface (choroid plexus) and the blood-brain barrier at various stages of development and aging. Barrier transport and permeability investigations are also done for neurodegenerative disorders such as ischemia, hyperthermia, hypertension, brain trauma, hydrocephalus and Alzheimer's disease. In addition his clinical neuroscience research group investigates CSF formation and reabsorption, and the impact of altered CSF dynamics on brain metabolism, extracellular fluid composition and cognition. Peptides such as arginine vasopressin, atrial natriuretic peptide and basic fibroblast growth factor are being evaluated for their effects on fluid production by choroid plexus. Another research emphasis is to devise new ways to deliver drugs and therapeutic agents to periventricular neurogenic niches, the hippocampus and hypothalamus. The goal of this CSF homeostasis laboratory is to delineate epigenetic factors that modulate the expression of ion and organic solute transporters such as the Na pump, Na-K-Cl cotransport, P-gp, RAGE, LRP-1 and MRP in both the cerebral capillary endothelium and choroid plexus epithelial cells. Finer pharmacologic control of transport across the CNS barriers should lead to more effective control of brain diseases.

Mark G Luciano, MD, PhD, Johns Hopkins University, USA
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Mark G Luciano is director of the Johns Hopkins Center for CSF Disorders and Transitional Center, Baltimore, and Neurosurgeon affiliated to the Johns Hopkins Hospital and Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. He was at the Cleveland Clinic Department of Neurosurgery from 1993 after training in general neurosurgery at the University of Pennsylvania and in pediatric neurosurgery at Harvard’s Boston Children’s Hospital. He received additional training in research through a PhD from Tulane University and a research fellowship at the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Luciano treats both children and adults with neurological congenital anomalies, hydrocephalus, cerebral cysts, tumors, craniofacial anomalies, tethered cord, Chiari malformation and cerebral palsy. Dr. Luciano directs the Neuroendoscopy program and also initiated the first multidisciplinary clinic in the USA to diagnose and treat normal pressure hydrocephalus. His NIH-funded experimental research has centered on the brain’s adaptation to the chronic compression and hypoxia of hydrocephalus and on the dynamic relationship between the CSF and vascular systems. He has mentored PhD graduate students in both engineering and neuroscience and his experimental work also has resulted in invention and development of a novel device intended to increase cerebral blood flow.

Edward A Neuwelt, MD, Oregon Health & Science University, USA
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Edward A. Neuwelt, M.D. is a Professor in the Departments of Neurology and  Neurosurgery at Oregon Health & Science University and the Portland Veterans  Affairs Medical Center in Portland, Oregon.  Dr Neuwelt is certified by the  American Board of Neurological Surgery and is a fully trained neuro-oncologist.   Currently Dr Neuwelt is a Professor in the departments of Neurology and  Neurological Surgery. With regard to the Blood-Brain Barrier (BBB) Program, Dr Neuwelt has overseen the expansion of the program to eight institutions across  the US and internationally including Canada and Israel, as well as the annual  BBB Consortium meeting funded by an R13 grant.  Dr Neuwelt is the principal  investigator of three NIH R01 grants, one VA Merit Review grant, and a DOD Center of Excellence award. 
E-mail: neuwelte@ohsu.edu
Web page: www.ohsu.edu/bbb

Professor John Pickard, CBE, FMedSci, University of Cambridge, UK
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John Pickard is Emeritus Professor of Neurosurgery, Department of Neurosurgery, Clinical Neurosciences, former Chairman of the Wolfson Brain Imaging Centre and Honorary Director of the NIHR Brain Injury Medtech Cooperative.  He is dedicated to advancing the care of patients with brain injury of various types (trauma, coma, stroke, hydrocephalus) through studies of pathophysiology including multimodality bedside monitoring, PET and MR imaging and new treatments. Discoveries have included a definition of how early insults to the brain in both childhood and later life may lead to later changes and cognitive outcome, new ways of detecting when the blood supply to critical areas of the brain become at risk, which treatments may be helpful and which counterproductive, detection of awareness in prolonged disorders of consciousness (fMR, EEG), which parts of the brain are affected in normal pressure hydrocephalus and novel treatment for the pseudotumor cerebri syndrome.

Pierre-Olivier Couraud, PhD, Institut Cochin, France 
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Pierre-Olivier Couraud, PhD, is a cell biologist who has been working on the biology of brain endothelium for about 25 years. He is well recognized in the field for his contribution to the production and diffusion of immortalized brain endothelial cell lines as in vitro models of the blood-brain barrier: rat brain endothelial cell lines (RBE4, GPNT), followed by the widely used human brain endothelial cell line hCMEC/D3. His scientific interests are focused on the infiltration of leukocytes across the blood-brain barrier during Multiple sclerosis or Stroke and on the molecular mechanisms of the regulation of tight junctions at the blood-brain barrier.
He is co-author of more than 250 peer-reviewed articles, Head of the Institut Cochin (INSERM, CNRS, University of Paris, France) a large Research Center dedicated to basic research in biology as well as therapeutic applications. He is currently Chairman of the INSERM Scientific Advisory Board.
 

Associate Editors

Bjoern Bauer, PhD, University of Kentucky, USA
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Dr. Bjoern Bauer is Associate Professor in the College of Pharmacy, University of Kentucky. Dr. Bauer received a B.S. in Pharmacy and a Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Sciences/Pharmacology from the University of Heidelberg, Germany, and then conducted work as Postdoctoral Fellow at the NIH/NIEHS in Research Triangle Park, NC, USA. Dr. Bauer’s research focus is on the regulation of blood-brain barrier function in epilepsy, Alzheimer’s disease, and brain cancer.




Anne Benninghaus, MSc, Aachen University, Germany
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In 2015, Anne Benninghaus received her Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering with a specialisation in Medical Engineering from RWTH Aachen University, Germany, and made it onto the Dean's list in the top 5% of her class. She has been involved in modelling CSF dynamics for over nine years. Anne currently works as a research associate at the Department of Medical Engineering at RWTH Aachen University, where she is the team leader for "CSF Biomechanics". Her research focuses on in vitro and in silico modelling of CSF dynamics to investigate and understand the underlying fluid mechanics, especially with regard to the aetiology of normal pressure hydrocephalus and the testing of alternative therapy options.

Matthew Campbell, PhD, Smurfit Institute of Genetics, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland 
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Dr Matthew Campbell graduated from University College Dublin (UCD) in 2006 with a PhD in Biochemistry followed by Post-doctoral research in Trinity College Dublin (TCD) in Human Molecular Genetics (2006-2012). He has published extensively on the use of RNA interference (RNAi) to modulate levels of distinct tight junction proteins at the blood-brain barrier/inner blood retina barrier (BBB/iBRB) in vivo. Additionally, he has published numerous articles focused on understanding the molecular pathology of diseases such as age-related macular degeneration (AMD), Alzheimer's disease, Schizophrenia, traumatic brain injury (TBI) and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).  He leads the Neurovascular Genetics Research group based in the Smurfit Institute of Genetics at TCD where he is also a lecturer in Human Genetics.  
In 2013, he was awarded Science Foundation Ireland's (SFI) most prestigious prize for young researchers, the President of Ireland Young Researcher Award (PIYRA) in relation to his BBB based research.  In the same year, he was awarded the Genentech/ARVO research fellowship for his ophthalmology focused work related to AMD.  This work led to numerous papers including Nature Medicine (2012, 2014) and Science Translational Medicine (2014) describing the therapeutic potential for IL-18 and its use in treating patients with wet AMD. 
For more information see: www.bbb2014dublin.com.

Benjamin D. Elder, MD, PhD, Mayo Clinic Rochester, USA
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Benjamin D. Elder, MD, PhD, is a neurosurgeon who is fellowship-trained in complex spinal surgery and spinal oncology. Additionally, he completed an orthopedic surgery fellowship in spinal deformity surgery. He specializes in the treatment of adult spinal deformity, scoliosis surgery, and revision spine surgery of the cervical, thoracic, and lumbar spine. He also has extensive experience in the surgical management of a variety of spinal conditions, including spinal tumors, spinal stenosis, neck and back pain, herniated discs, and pinched nerves, and holds particular expertise in the treatment of normal pressure hydrocephalus. His goal is to work with each patient individually to develop the least invasive treatment to improve their pain and function, ranging from nonsurgical management to major reconstructive surgeries.

Dr. Elder is also the principal investigator of the Mayo Clinic Stem Cell Therapeutics and Tissue Engineering Laboratory. His research is focused on developing new regenerative medicine and tissue engineering approaches using stem cells and biomaterials for repair of the bone and cartilage of the spine. Additionally, he has significant expertise in the management and optimization of bone health and osteoporosis for patients undergoing spinal surgery in order to maximize the benefits of surgery.

Xavier Declèves, PharmD, PhD, University Paris Descartes, France
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Xavier Declèves, Pharm D, PhD is full Professor of Pharmacokinetics, Faculty of Pharmacy, the University of Paris Descartes, France. He received a PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences/Pharmacokinetics from the University of Paris Descartes, France. He is now the head of the department of Pharmacology and Toxicology platform at the Cochin Hospital, Assistance-Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris, Paris, France and from 2014 the team leader of the team “Pathophysiology and Therapeutic Targets of the Blood-Brain Barrier”. Prof Declèves has made contributions in the expression, activity and regulation of drug-metabolizing enzymes and drug transporters at the blood-brain barrier under drug exposure and pathological situations and their roles in neuropharmacokinetics.

Carolyn Harris, PhD, Wayne State University, USA
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Carolyn Harris is currently an Associate Professor at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. She is broadly interested in understanding neuroinflammation and cell-biomaterial interactions in neurological conditions.  Using translational research, bench top 3D culture models, and high-throughput microfluidic models, Dr. Harris works to understand how local environments impact how and why failure of chronic indwelling devices occur when implanted in the brain. Her laboratory is currently studying these concepts pertinent to hydrocephalus, specifically focused on the influence of variable degrees of neuroinflammation and CSF dynamics and how they dictate shunt obstruction. Dr. Harris received her bachelor’s degree from Purdue University and her PhD from the University of Utah. She then completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Seattle Children’s Research Institute’s Center for Integrative Brain Research.

Albert M. Isaacs, MD, PhD, Nationwide Children’s Hospital, USA
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Albert Isaacs, MD, PhD, is a pediatric neurosurgeon at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and an assistant professor of Neurological Surgery at The Ohio State University College of Medicine. Dr. Isaacs obtained his Bachelor of Science degree from Carleton University in Ottawa, followed by his medical degree from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. During residency training in Neurosurgery at the University of Calgary, Dr. Isaacs completed graduate studies in Neuroscience at both the University of Calgary and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. He completed his Pediatric Neurosurgery fellowship at Vanderbilt University’s Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital in Nashville. Dr. Isaacs’ extensive background and training across various institutions and countries reflect his unyielding commitment to excellence and dedication to mentoring the next generation of neurosurgeons.
 

Nathalie Jurisch-Yaksi, PhD, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway
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Nathalie Jurisch-Yaksi is a group leader at the Department of Clinical and Molecular Medicine at the Faculty of Medicine, Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Her research program aims at understanding how fluid flow and cilia regulate organ development and physiology, with an emphasis on the nervous system. To achieve this, her laboratory uses state-of-the-art cellular and molecular biology, genetics, microscopy, fluid dynamics, neural imaging, behavioral assays and quantitative data analysis in the genetic model organism zebrafish. Her research interests include cilia, fluid flow, brain development, ependymal cells, choroid plexus, live imaging, hydrocephalus, and ciliopathies.


Ville Leinonen, MD, PhD, Kuopio University Hospital, Finland 
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Ville Leinonen is Professor of Neurosurgery in University of Eastern Finland (UEF) and Kuopio University Hospital (KUH). He received his MD in 2002 and PhD in physiology in 2004 from University of Kuopio, Finland. His research interests include idiopathic normal pressure hydrocephalus (iNPH), neurodegenerative diseases in relation with iNPH, and spinal disorders. He is Director of KUH NPH Research Group (www.uef.fi/nph).




Bryn Martin, PhD, University of Idaho, USA
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Dr. Martin serves as Adjunct Associate Professor of Mechanical, Chemical, and Biological Engineering at University of Idaho (2015-present) and Vice President of Research, Precision Delivery, and Cerebrospinal Fluid Sciences at Alcyone Therapeutics (2020-present).  From 2012-15 Dr. Martin served as the first Director of the Conquer Chiari Research Center at University of Idaho.  He completed post-doctoral training from 2009-2012 at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) and earned a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Dr. Martin's research focuses on investigation of CSF dynamics in health, disease, and therapeutics.   Specific areas of expertise include Chiari malformation, syringomyelia, intrathecal drug delivery and CSF filtration, astronaut eye biomechanics, in vitro and computational fluid dynamics modeling of CSF, in vivo imaging of CSF, and medical device research and development.  Dr. Martin has served as Principal Investigator for research funded by National Institute of Health (NIH), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), National Science Foundation (NSF), industry and foundations. He also contributes as a scientific advisory board member for industry and foundations.

Nanna MacAulay, DMSci, PhD, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
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Nanna MacAulay is a Professor at the Department of Neuroscience, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen. She carried out her graduate studies at McGill University, Montreal, Canada and University of Copenhagen, Denmark on membrane transport of salt and water. Following a post-doctoral position in neurophysiology at University of Copenhagen, Professor MacAulay established her own research group at University of Copenhagen when she was appointed associate professor in 2007. The focus of Professor MacAulay’s research is the molecular mechanisms underlying brain water and ion homeostasis with a special interest in cerebrospinal fluid production and ion/water flux across the cerebral endothelium and the regulation thereof.

James (Pat) P McAllister, PhD, Washington University School of Medicine, USA
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James P. McAllister II, PhD is Professor in the Department of Neurosurgery, Division of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Washington University and the Saint Louis Children’s Hospital. His interdisciplinary approach includes a variety of translational research initiatives to advance understanding of the pathophysiology of hydrocephalus and develop improved treatments for this insidious disorder. Dr McAllister received his Ph.D. from Purdue University in 1976, and following postdoctoral training at the University of Vermont School of Medicine, has held staff positions at the UCLA Mental Retardation Research Center, Temple University School of Medicine, the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, the Detroit Medical Center/Wayne State University, and the University of Utah prior to joining Washington University in July, 2014. Dr McAllister has dedicated nearly 31 years to the study of hydrocephalus, and recently was given the Robert H. Pudenz Prize for Excellence Cerebrospinal Fluid Physiology and Hydrocephalus by the International Society for Pediatric Neurosurgery. In addition to advancing our understanding of the neuronal damage that occurs in the hydrocephalic brain, his introduction of shunting experiments in the mid-eighties has contributed to what is known about the potential for recovery after treatment. Working closely with bioengineers and pediatric neurosurgeons, he also explores treatments that could supplement surgical approaches (cerebrospinal fluid shunting) by protecting neurons or promoting regeneration in the hydrocephalic brain, as well as developing shunt systems that resist cellular obstruction.
"As a traditional neurobiologist with a fundamental interest in neural tube defects, my research includes a variety of interdisciplinary, translational approaches to advance understanding of the pathophysiology of hydrocephalus and develop improved treatments for this disorder. Working closely with neuroscientists, neurosurgeons and bioengineers, I investigate the neuronal damage that occurs in the hydrocephalic brain and explore treatments that could supplement surgical approaches by protecting cells, reducing neuroinflammation, or promoting regeneration in the hydrocephalic brain. I evaluate the functional effects of ventricular shunting and endoscopic third ventriculostomy and choroid plexus cauterization, analyse brain compliance using magnetic resonance elastography in patients and animal models, and reveal the pathophysiology of post-hemorrhagic hydrocephalus. I also collaborate with biomedical engineers and small companies to help develop shunt systems that resist cellular obstruction and monitoring systems that noninvasively detect cerebrospinal fluid flow and intracranial pressure. Finally, I actively mentor a wide variety of students at all educational levels."

Kent-Andre Mardal, PhD, University of Oslo, Norway
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Professor Kent-Andre Mardal graduated from the University of Oslo in 1999 in applied and industrial mathematics. He obtained his PhD in 2003 at Simula Research Laboratory / University of Oslo, developing numerical methods with applications to fluid mechanics.
His research interests concern mathematical modelling of the fluid flows of the brain in health, disease and during ageing. Particular focus the last years has been the interaction between the cerebrospinal fluid and both the macro- and micro-circulation. 


Sumio Ohtsuki, PhD, Kumamoto University, Japan
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Dr. Sumio Ohtsuki is currently Professor at Kumamoto University. He received a Ph.D. degree in Life Pharmaceutical Sciences from University of Tokyo in 1996. He completed a Postdoctoral training in Molecular Genetics and Developmental Biology research at University of California from 1996 to 1999. He was appointed Assistant Professor in Tohoku University in 2000, Associate Professor of Tohoku University in 2003, and Professor of Kumamoto University in 2012. Dr. Ohtsuki received New Investigator Award in Asian Pacific Region from International Society for the Study of Xenobiotics (ISSX) in 2008, Meritorious Manuscript Award from American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS) in 2010 and Ebert Prize from the American Pharmacists Association (APhA) in 2020. His major research interests are regulation of transport and tight junctions at the blood-brain barrier, drug delivery to the brain and quantitative proteomics of membrane proteins.
E-mail: sohtsuki@kumamoto-u.ac.jp
Web page: www.ohtsuki-lab.jp

Joel Pachter, PhD, University of Connecticut Health Center, US
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Dr. Pachter initially trained at the Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research, in Milan, Italy, before pursuing his Ph.D. studies in axonal transport in the Department of Pharmacology at The New York University School of Medicine. After obtaining his Ph.D., Dr. Pachter completed a NIH-sponsored postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Physiological Chemistry at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, studying the mechanisms of tubulin gene autoregulation. He then accepted a faculty position in the Department of Physiology (now Cell Biology) at the University of Connecticut Health Center, where he has remained and was promoted to Full Professor in 2003. Dr. Pachter's major research interests are the blood–brain barrier and neuroinflammation. Most recently, he has turned his attention toward the emerging technique of laser capture microdissection, applying this toward exploring gene regulation of CNS barriers in situ. Dr. Pachter is also on the editorial board of Microvascular Research, and currently sits on a study section at the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. He additionally serves as ad hoc reviewer for the Brain Injuries and Neurovascular Pathologies study section at the National Institutes of Health.

Steven T. Proulx, PhD, University of Bern, Switzerland
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Dr. Steven T. Proulx attended SUNY- Binghamton University and was awarded a Bachelor’s of Science in Mechanical Engineering in 1998. He received a Master’s of Science in Biomechanical Engineering in May of 1999 from Stanford University. After 4 years working as an engineer outside academia, he reentered graduate school at the University of Rochester in 2003 in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. He was awarded a Sproull Fellowship to attend Rochester where he pursued research in the Center for Musculoskeletal Research under the direction of Dr. Edward Schwarz and received his PhD in March 2008. From 2008 until 2012, he performed research as a post-doctoral fellow in the lab of Dr. Michael Detmar at ETH Zurich in Zurich, Switzerland where he performed research on developing methods for in vivo lymphatic vessel imaging.  In 2012 he was awarded the Andrew Moisoff Young Investigator Award from the Lymphatic Research Foundation. From 2013 to 2019, he has served in the role of Senior Scientist in the lab of Dr. Detmar. As of February 2019, he is a Group Leader at the Theodor Kocher Institute at the University of Bern where he focuses on imaging studies related to fluid flow within the central nervous system and the connections with the lymphatic system. He has co-authored over 60 scientific publications.

Patrick Ronaldson, PhD, University of Arizona, USA
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Dr. Patrick T. Ronaldson is a Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Arizona College of Medicine. Dr. Ronaldson obtained his bachelor’s degree in Pharmacology and his doctoral degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences, both from the University of Toronto, Canada. Following doctoral studies, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Arizona. Dr. Ronaldson’s laboratory is currently focused on targeting transporters at the blood-brain barrier for delivery of neuroprotective drugs and for vascular protection in the setting of cerebral hypoxia and ischemic stroke. His laboratory is also working to understand changes to blood-brain barrier tight junction complexes in health and disease and on development of novel therapeutic strategies for neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease. He has published more than 50 research and review articles and 7 book chapters on drug transporters and blood-brain barrier biology. Dr Ronaldson’s laboratory has a strong record of extramural funding including current grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and previous grant support from the American Heart Association, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers’ Association (PhRMA) Foundation, and the Arizona Biomedical Research Commission (ABRC). He is also a past chair of the NIH study section entitled Drug Discovery for the Nervous System (DDNS) and the past chair of the Pharmacokinetics, Pharmacodynamics, and Drug Metabolism (PPDM) Community of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS).

Marianne Schmid Daners, PhD, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
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Marianne Schmid Daners is a Senior Scientist in the Biomedical Applications Group at the Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control (IDSC) at ETH Zurich. She graduated from ETH Zurich as a mechanical engineer in 2006. Under the supervision of Professor Guzzella, she completed her doctorate at the IDSC on the topic “Adaptive Shunts for Cerebrospinal Fluid Control” in 2012. Her research focuses on modeling, control, and testing of biological systems, as well as development and control of biomedical devices for the treatment of hydrocephalus and heart failure. She has authored numerous publications in the field of hydrocephalus or cardiovascular support and holds several patents on physiological controllers for cardiac assist devices and related sensor technology.

Eleuterio Toro, PhD, DHC, OBE, University of Trento, Italy
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Eleuterio F. Toro is currently an Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at the University of Trento, Italy and formerly a Professor of Numerical Analysis (Professore Chiara Fama) at the same University. He holds an Honours BSc in pure mathematics; an MSc in functional analysis and differential equations and a PhD in computational mathematics. Since 1982, and prior to his appointment in Italy (2002), professor Toro held several academic positions in the United Kingdom, including a full professorship; he has also held many visiting appointments in various countries, such as Japan, Russia, China and USA; he is recipient of several honours and distinctions in various countries.  His research has for many years focused on the construction of computational methods for solving time-dependent evolutionary partial differential equations, with emphasis on hyperbolic balance laws and applications to industrial, aerospace, environmental and medical problems.  He is author/editor of several books and author of more than 300 publications. Currently, his research is focused on the biophysics of neurological diseases and their association to the disturbed dynamical interaction of fluid compartments in the central nervous system (arterial blood, venous blood, interstitial fluid, cerebrospinal fluid, the brain parenchyma and the lymphatic system). His work over the last few years, in collaboration with students and academics in various countries, has culminated in the construction of a closed-loop, global mathematical model for the full human cardiovascular system, with special attention to CNS fluid compartments.
More details are found in Website: eleuteriotoro.com

Dionna Williams, PhD, Emory University, USA
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Dr. Dionna Williams (she/they) is an Associate Professor in the School of Medicine at Emory University. Dr. Williams received a BS in Biochemistry from Hofstra University, a MS and PhD in Biomedical Sciences from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Williams’ research focus is on the impact of viral infection, antiviral therapies, and substance use on blood-brain barrier function, with a focus on drug transporters, drug metabolism, and immune cell extravasation.




Yao Yao, PhD, University of South Florida, USA

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Dr. Yao is an Associate Professor in the Department of Molecular Pharmacology and Physiology, Morsani College of Medicine, University of South Florida. Dr. Yao received his PhD in Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology from Stony Brook University and did his postdoctoral training in Neurobiology and Genetics at the Rockefeller University. Dr. Yao’s research mainly focuses on the functions of laminins (basal lamina) in blood-brain barrier maintenance under both homeostatic and pathological conditions. In addition, Dr. Yao is also interested in pericytes and fibroblasts. His laboratory is investigating the roles of pericytes and fibroblasts in the pathogenesis of various neurological disorders, including stroke and Alzheimer’s disease.


Editorial Board

Shin-ichi Akanuma, PhD, University of Toyama, Japan
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Dr. Shin-ichi Akanuma has worked as Assistant Professor in Academic Assembly, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences (former, Graduate School of Medicine and Pharmaceutical Sciences), at University of Toyama from 2007. He received his Ph.D. on Pharmaceutical Sciences from Tohoku University, Japan, in 2012. He has an experience of studying BBB transporter biology at the University of Kentucky, USA from 2015 to 2016. His strong research interest is a role of membrane transporters at blood-brain/retinal barriers in the onset and development of neurological diseases. Especially, he is focusing on the optimization of barrier conditions in neurological diseases. His research experiences mainly cover the in vivo/in vitro pharmacokinetic, histochemical, and fluorescent-imaging studies.

Abraham Al-Ahmad, PhD, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, USA
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Dr Abraham Alahmad received his PhD degree in 2009 in Human Physiology at the University of Zurich (Switzerland) after his training in the blood-brain barrier response to hypoxia in the Department of Veterinary Physiology, under the supervision of Dr ‘Lara Ogunshola. He completed two postdoctoral trainings. Under the supervision of Dr Gregory Bix (Texas A&M University, USA), he focused on understanding the role of the extracellular matrix following ischemic stroke injury; followed by a second training under Dr Eric Shusta (University of Wisconsin, USA) in which he gained skills in the use of patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) for modelling the human blood-brain barrier in vitro. During this training, he started to develop such a model as a drug discovery and disease modeling platform.
Dr Al Ahmad is currently an associate professor at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, Jerry H. Hodge School of Pharmacy. He is pursuing his research on the use of iPSCs to model how environmental (e.g. hypoxia, toxicants) and genetics (neurogenetic disorders) influence the blood-brain barrier integrity in several diseases including Alzheimer’s disease, cerebral hypoxia/ischemia and GLUT1 deficiency.

Anuska V. Andjelkovic, MD, PhD, University of Michigan, USA
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Dr. Anuska Andjelkovic, MD, PhD is  Professor of Pathology and Research Professor of Neurosurgery. Dr Andjelkovic received her M.D. from University of Nis Yugoslavia (Yugoslavia/Serbia), and completed graduate studies at University Belgrade Serbia, in Neuroscience.  Dr Andjelkovic completed her postdoctoral training at University of Connecticut, Medical school and in 2001, she joined the faculty of the Department of Neurosurgery and  Department of Pathology, University of Michigan.  
Since 2001 she developed research program focused on blood brain barrier dysfunction in neuroinflammation and cerebrovascular disease. Her main research areas are tight junctional protein dynamics, the complexity of junctional protein-protein interaction, signaling and epigenetic processes involved in barrier remodeling in stroke, aging and age associated small vessels disease (cerebral amyloid angiopathy); the molecular mechanism involved in cerebral cavernous malformation (CCM) lesion leakage and hemorrhagic transformation; the detrimental effect of inflammation on stroke recovery; modulation of tight junctions with small peptides for efficient drug delivery across BBB. 

David A. Antonetti, PhD, University of Michigan, USA
Dr. Antonetti received his PhD in Cellular and Molecular Biology at The Penn State College of Medicine under the direction of Dr. Jim Jefferson and was a post-doctoral fellow at the Joslin Diabetes Center at Harvard Medical School under the direction of Dr. C. Ronald Kahn. Upon returning to Penn State, he was one of the first to bring high-level signal transduction expertise to the problem of diabetic retinopathy, stroke and the regulation of the blood-brain/retinal barrier. Over the last 20 years, he has become one of the world’s leading experts in mechanisms of vascular permeability in diabetic retinopathy and stroke, and the molecular mechanisms that underlie angiogenesis and neovascularization. He has received awards including the Jules Francois Prize for Young Investigator at Ophthalmologia Beligica, the Hinkle Society Mid-Career Translational Research Award, and the Most Inspirational Teacher Award for graduate education at Penn State. He held the very prestigious Jules and Doris Stein Professorship from Research to Prevent Blindness. Currently he is the inaugural Roger W. Kittendorf Research Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences. Dr. Antonetti is the Associate Chair of Basic Research at the Kellogg Eye Center of the University of Michigan.

Olivier Baledent, PhD, Jules Verne University, France
New Content ItemOlivier Balédent, PhD in the field of biophysics and radiology. He received his PhD in 2001 from Jules Verne University. His thesis topic was on CSF and cerebral blood flow imaging by MRI. He is currently an assistant professor and head of the medical image-processing department at the University Hospital of Amiens in France. He is a member of the CHIMERE UR 7516 research team dedicated to the head and neck in which he leads the BioFlow group. He is the director of the Animal MR Department at Jules Verne University. He is also professor of biophysics at the Faculty of Medicine of Amiens. Vice-president of the new study group Imaging of Neurofluids that he created with his colleague in 2020 within the International Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine. The objective is to highlight the importance of CSF and blood flow in the physiology of the brain. It is a place open to multidisciplinary exchanges.  
Today, with the clinicians in his group, he continues to develop research on CSF and cerebral blood flow for ultimate use in clinical practice. Currently, with colleagues from other hospitals and research groups, he is working to understand the relationship between neurofluid dynamics and intracranial pressure in patients with hydrocephalus. The goal of this research is to improve the diagnosis of reversible dementia. https://revertproject.org/

William Banks, MD, University of Washington, USA
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Since 2010, Dr Banks has been a Professor in the Division of Gerontology and Geriatric Medicine, Dept of Medicine, University of Washington School of Medicine. Seattle. Since 2016, he has been the Associate Chief of Staff – Research & Development for the Veterans Affairs Puget Sound Health Care System.  He is a former Editor-in-Chief of Current Pharmaceutical Design and is currently on 16 editorial boards. He received his MD from University of MO-Columbia in 1979 and did training at Tulane University. He is author of over 600 non-abstract publications.
His research interests for 40 years have been the investigation of the mechanisms by which the brain and body communicate through blood-borne mechanisms and how such knowledge can be used to treat human diseases. Understanding these mechanisms has necessitated an in-depth study of the blood-brain barrier (BBB). The work has contributed to modern concepts of the BBB, including its ability to act more as a regulatory interface between the blood and brain than as an absolute barrier. He has strong interests in understanding how the BBB responds to physiological changes and reacts to, mediates, and even causes disease states. In this regard, he has a long-standing interest in questions related to the mechanisms by which pathogens interact with and cross the BBB. Current areas of interest include blood-brain barrier, peptides, cytokines, regulatory proteins, obesity, drug delivery, Alzheimer’s disease, LRP-1, P-gp, diabetes and the CNS, neuroAIDS, SARS-CoV-2, neuroinflammation, neuroimmunology, aging, and insulin.

Robert Bell, PhD, Ascidian Therapeutics, USA
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Robert received a PhD in Pathology studying the role of cerebral vascular dysfunction in Alzheimer’s disease at the University of Rochester. He then completed an AHA funded postdoctoral fellowship in cardiovascular biology and held a Research Assistant Professor position in the Department of Neurosurgery at the University of Rochester Medical Center. He joined Pfizer’s Neuroscience Research Unit in 2012 and built a preclinical research lab focused on vascular targets in central nervous system (CNS) disorders and drug delivery across the blood-brain barrier. In 2017, Robert joined the Rare Disease Research Unit at Pfizer where he led a group focused on developing novel AAV-based gene therapies for rare neurological and metabolic conditions. He has authored over 30 scientific papers, served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease and Fluids and Barriers of the CNS, is a scientific advisory board member for the Hereditary Neuropathy Foundation, held a collaborating adjunct faculty appointment at the University of Rhode Island Institute for Neuroscience, and was a steering committee member for the NIH’s Accelerating Medicines Partnership for Parkinson’s Disease. He has had a long-standing interest in understanding how the vascular and other fluid systems in the body contribute to health, disease, and the biodistribution of therapeutic molecules. In 2021, Robert joined Ascidian Therapeutics, a biotech startup that uses unique molecular technology to unlock gene therapy, where he is Vice President and Head of Research.

Reina Bendayan, PharmD, PhD, University of Toronto, Canada
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Dr. Reina Bendayan is a Professor, Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Toronto and Career Scientist, Ontario HIV Treatment Network, Ministry of Health of Ontario. Dr. Bendayan’s research program is primarily focused on Membrane Transport and Therapeutics with an emphasis in the field of HIV/AIDS Antiviral Drug Transport and Regulation at blood-tissue barriers, sanctuary sites and cellular reservoirs of HIV. Recent work on the regulation of folate transport to the brain, has identified a novel approach for treating cerebral folate deficiency, a rare but devastating paediatric condition. Her research program is primarily funded by CIHR, Ministry of Health of Ontario and NSERC. She is the author of over 100 peer-reviewed manuscripts and has supervised many graduate students and post-doctoral research fellows. She is a member of several national and international scientific associations:  AAPS, CSPS, ASPET, IBBS, ISSX, and IAS. Dr. Bendayan was elected Fellow of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS; 2010), the Canadian Society of Pharmaceutical Sciences (CSPS; 2015) and the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences (September 2021). She is the recipient of the Association of Faculties of Pharmacy of Canada Research Career Award (2013) and the AAPS (2015) and CSPS Leadership Award (2019). She served as Graduate Coordinator (1998-2003), Chair and Associate Dean Graduate Education of the Graduate Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences (July 2005-July 2011) and as Acting Dean of the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy (2007).  
E-mail: r.bendayan@utoronto.ca
Web page: phm.utoronto.ca/~bendayan

Ingolf Blasig, PhD, DSc, Leibniz Institute for Molecular Pharmacology, Germany
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Ingolf Blasig heads the Molecular Cell Physiology Unit at the Leibnizinstitute for Molecular Pharmacology Berlin-Buch, Germany. He holds a Diploma in Biochemistry from the University Leipzig, a Ph.D. in Pharmacology from the Academy of Sciences Berlin, and a D.Sc. in Biochemical Pharmacology from the University Halle. 1977-1992, he led a laboratory at the Academy of Sciences and completed Postgraduation in biochemistry and pharmacology. He is Senior Lecturer at Universities in Berlin and Potsdam. 1992, he has been appointed Independent Research Group Leader for tissue barrier research at the Institute for Molecular Pharmacology and is member of the direction board.
Research focus is on the elucidation of structure, function, and manipulation of cell-cell contacts to explore tight junctions (TJ) in barrier-forming cells under normal and pathological conditions to disclose neuropatho­physio­logical mechanisms for better therapy. The interest includes strategies especially modulating cerebral barriers to improve drug delivery to the brain. As the barriers are determined by membrane proteins, strand-forming claudins, regulatory occludin-like proteins, and membrane-associated proteins such zonula occludens proteins are investigated on protein, cellular, and organismic level including patient material.

Birger Brodin, PhD, University of Copenhagen, Denmark 
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Birger Brodin is professor of the research group “CNS Drug Delivery and Barrier Modelling “ at the Department of Pharmacy, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen and currently serving as Interim Head of Department. He obtained his PhD at the August Krogh Institute, University of Copenhagen, in 1995. The group investigates drug transport mechanisms in the brain endothelium, develop new drug modalities and techniques to generate in vitro models of the blood-brain barrier.  The group participates in national and international research networks, as well as teaching within neuroscience/BBB drug delivery. Birger Brodin is founder of the Scandinavian Blood-Brain Barrier network, member of the Signal Transduction at the BBB International Committee, has authored > 110 scientific peer reviewed publications and is actively engaged in public science dissemination.

Peter D Brown, PhD, University of Manchester, UK
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1977- 1981 B.Sc. in Applied Biology from University of Bradford
1981-1984 Ph.D. in Cell Physiology, Babraham Institute and University of Cambridge
1985-1987 Post Doctoral Fellow in Department of Physiology, University of California, Los Angeles
1987- present Lecturer then Senior Lecturer at the University of Manchester. His research interests are the mechanism of CSF secretion and regulation of CSF composition.



Roxana Carare, PhD, University of Southampton, UK
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Roxana Carare qualified in Medicine in Bucharest in 1994. During her basic clinical training, she became fascinated by anatomy and completed her PhD in neuropathology in 2006, in the University of Southampton, UK. The main international recognition for Roxana Carare has come from the interdisciplinary research she leads, relevant to drug delivery to the brain and to the causes and new treatments for Alzheimer's disease, with over 120 peer reviewed publications in the field. Roxana is a member of the UK Medical Research Council Dementia Platform UK Vascular Experimental Medicine committee and the UK government advisory committee for the effects of pollution on the brain, has served as the only European member of the American NIH strategy committee for funding in dementia. Roxana has won prestigious awards, including a Dementia Research Leader award from Alzheimer’s Society UK. Roxana has served as Co-Chair for The International Alliance of Women Alzheimer's Researchers in Alzheimer’s Association, Vice-Chair of the Vascular Professional Interest Area of Alzheimer’s Association, co-leads the Scientific Committee for Vas-Cog, Secretary of the British Neuropathological Society, member of the scientific committee of the Rainwater Foundation, serves as an expert for several international research funding boards. Roxana is a Visiting Professor in the University of Medicine, Pharmacy, Science and Technology Targu Mures- Romania where she has co-founded the British-Romanian Academic Institute of Neuroscience.

James Connor, MS, PhD, Pennsylvania State University, USA
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James R. Connor, Ph.D. is a Distinguished Professor, Vice chair of Neurosurgery, Director of the Center for Aging and Neurodegenerative Diseases and co-Director of the Program in Neuro-oncology at Penn State M.S. Hershey Medical Center. Dr Connor’s research program is focused on understanding the mechanisms for regulation of iron in the brain. Connor’s group pioneered the development of the field of iron in neurobiology. Connor and his team have identified the contribution of iron mismanagement in the brain to numerous neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and more recently Restless Legs Syndrome.


Thomas P Davis, PhD, University of Arizona, USA
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Dr Thomas P. Davis is Professor of Medical Pharmacology in the College of Medicine and Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology in the College of Medicine, at the University of Arizona. He received his bachelor’s degree in biology from Loyola University (1973), his M.Sc. in physiology from the University of Nevada (1975) and his Ph.D. in physiology and Biochemistry from the University of Missouri (1978). He carried out postdoctoral training at Abbott Pharmaceutical Company as a development chemist in the therapy monitoring venture (TDx) group before joining the UA faculty in November of 1980. Dr Davis is an expert in the delivery of drugs across the blood-brain barrier having been continuously funded by the N.I.H. since 1981. He has published more than 240 peer-reviewed research articles, has served on five consecutive N.I.H., brain disorders clinical neurosciences and acute neural injury and epilepsy study sections and has served on several other N.S.F., Welcome Trust and V.A. study sections.
Dr. Davis' laboratory has spent the past 38 years actively studying the challenges of central nervous system (CNS) drug delivery in disease and acute / chronic pain states. His research focus is to develop “state of the art” methods/procedures/tools/models for quantifying/studying the in vivo integrity and modulation of the blood brain barrier/neurovascular unit (BBB/NVU), and multi-drug transporters, such as P-glycoprotein (mdr1a;P-gp) and OATP 1A4, as altered by disease states associated with brain injury (stroke/hypoxia/anoxia) and acute, chronic and migraine pain.  Dr. Davis remains active and  dedicated to the mission of maintaining a rigorous research training program in drug delivery which leads to advances and discoveries such as P-gp transporter trafficking and occludin, claudin-5, tight junction (TJ) proteins altered by acute/chronic pain and opioid drug - drug interactions leading to BBB/NVU dysregulation. His reward is educating and training his undergraduates (44 to date), graduate (17 to date), post-doctoral, assistant and research professors (32 to date), to advance the BBB/NVU field. In the course of his research into the molecular, biochemical and physiological mechanisms associated with maintenance and disruption of the blood-brain barrier, endothelial cell TJ proteins and specific drug transporters, Dr Davis is proud to be cited by his peers for “paradigm shifting” discoveries and “meritorious mentoring” of the next generation of brain barrier researchers. In short, “we must understand how to get the drug into the brain so that we can treat diseases of the brain”.

Antonio Jimenez, PhD, University of Malaga, Spain
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Antonio J Jimenez graduated in Biological Sciences, and obtained his PhD degree (1993) studying the brain subcommissural and pineal organs (circumventricular organs). He is professor in Cell Biology in the University of Malaga, Malaga, Spain, and Instituto de Investigación Biomédica de Málaga.  Currently, his research is focussed on congenital and posthemorrhagic hydrocephalus and basic research into aetiology, diagnosis, and possible therapies together with experimental therapy with mesenchymal, neural and adult induced pluripotent stem cells.



Elizabeth CM de Lange, PhD, Leiden University, Netherlands 
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Prof. Elizabeth de Lange (PhD, PharmDhc) is staff member at the Division of Systems Biomedicine Pharmacology of the Leiden Academic Center for Drug Research (LACDR) and PI of the Predictive Pharmacology research group. She has been trained as a Biophysical Chemist and had her PhD in Pharmacology on “The use of microdialysis to study drug transport across the blood-brain barrier in health and disease”. 
Liesbeth’s ultimate aim is to predict human drug effects and early neurodegenerative disease stage by translational model development on the basis of preclinical and clinical data. To that end she underscores that the rate and extent of the body (biological systems) processes are condition dependent. Therefore, the mutual coherence and time dependencies of biological systems processes should be unraveled by strategic preclinical and clinical experimentation to obtain multilevel and longitudinal data combined with mathematical modelling (Mastermind Research Approach).
As the pharmacokinetics (PK) and pharmacodynamics (PD) of a drug are dependent on the interaction of the drug with the biological system, it depends on drug properties and rate and extent of biological systems processes. It is actually the understanding of the differences in the rate and extent of those processes between biological systems that forms the basis for interspecies and condition translation and prediction. Her research focusses on measurement of the PK of the drug in plasma; drug transport into and out of the target tissue; drug distribution within the target tissue; drug equilibration to the target site; and the ability of the drug to interact with the target, and (biomarkers of) the drug’s PD. These are interdependent. Particular emphasis lies on investigations on drug distribution to target tissues protected by special barriers, like the brain. A recent success has been the development of a physiologically-based multi-CNS compartment model that adequately predicts the PK of drugs in the different compartments of the mouse, rat and human CNS, only using the physico-chemical and biological properties of the drug.
As neurodegenerative diseases develop over time. For Alzheimer’s disease there is a lack of understanding on what makes the systems processes change in the onset of the disease, and how processes interact in disease progression. Especially the information on what causes the onset and early disease progression is important for developing intervening drugs before irreversible changes will dominate, to halt or even reverse the disease progression. Also here, the Mastermind Research Approach is applied, by measuring different endogenous compounds at different locations in preclinical species (including blood, Brain sites, CSF etc), at different stages in life. This will be translated to the human situation, and lay the foundation for a blood derived biomarker fingerprint, which is more patient friendly manner of a diagnose compared to a lumbar puncture for measuring in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), or (expensive) imaging modalities. Especially, a blood derived biomarker fingerprint of early stage AD would be of added value.
E-mail: ecmdelange@lacdr.leidenuniv.nl

Helga de Vries, PhD, VU University Medical Center, Netherlands 
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Dr Helga E de Vries is full professor at the Department of Molecular Cell Biology and Immunology of the VU University Medical Center, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Her research group is embedded within the research institute Amsterdam Neuroscience, where she is the current program leader of the research line neuro-inflammation.
The research team of Helga de Vries is focused on the identification of the molecular and cellular pathways that underlie vascular alterations in neuro-inflammatory and neurodegenerative disorders in a translational setting. Key research is dedicated on studying structure and function of the brain barriers and surrounding cell types during neuro-inflammatory and neurodegenerative disorders such as multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer’s disease. Importantly, neuropathological alterations that follow brain barrier damage and inflammation are under investigation. More fundamental research within her group is on the identification of underlying molecular mechanisms of barrier regulation and leukocyte trafficking into the central nervous system. Helga de Vries is president elect of the International Brain Barrier Society and she is chair of the Dutch society for brain barrier research, BBB Network (www.bbbnedwork.nl).

Yoshiharu Deguchi, PhD, Teikyo University, Japan  
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Dr Yoshiharu Deguchi is Professor, School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Teikyo University. He graduated Kanazawa University in 1980 and received Ph.D. degree from Kanazawa University in 1992. He was appointed Assistant Professor of University of Shizuoka in 1993. He worked for Dr William Pardridge at UCLA School of Medicine in 1997. He received the Young Investigator Award from the Japanese Society of Study for Xenobiotics (JSSX) in 2001. He was appointed Associate Professor of Teikyo University in 2002 and Professor of Teikyo University in 2004. He has been serving as an Editorial Advisory Board of Journal of Pharmaceutical Science, the Associate Editor of Drug Metabolism and Pharmacokinetics and the Editor of Journal of Pharmaceutical Science and Technology Japan. His major research interest is mechanism of the drug transport across the blood-brain barrier and its application to the drug delivery.
E-mail: deguchi@pharm.teikyo-u.ac.jp

Maria A Deli, MD, PhD, Biological Research Centre, Hungary
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Professor Maria Deli is the head of the research group “Biological Barriers” at the Biological Research Centre, Szeged, Hungary. She obtained her MD and PhD degrees at the University of Szeged. She worked as a JSPS postdoctoral fellow at the University of Nagasaki, Japan. Her main research areas are blood-brain barrier damage and protection in pathologies like Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy, metabolic syndrome; prediction of brain penetration of compounds by new static and dynamic co-culture models of the blood-brain barrier; drug targeting across barriers using nanoparticles; modulation of tight junctions with peptides and small molecules for drug delivery. She has published >190 scientific peer reviewed papers , and organized several international meetings related to blood-brain barrier research. She is member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the Academia Europaea.

Richard Edwards, MD, MBBS, FRCS, RFCS, Bristol Royal Hospital for Children, UK
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Richard Edwards is a Consultant Neurosurgeon in the Departments of Neurosurgery at Bristol Royal Hospital for Children and Southmead Hospital, Bristol. He is the current Chair of the UK CSF Disorders group of the Society of British Neurological Surgeons and a board member of the International Society for Hydrocephalus & CSF Disorders (Hydrocephalus Society). He was Congress President of the “Hydrocephalus 2014” international conference of the Hydrocephalus Society. He leads the Adult Hydrocephalus service in Bristol on of the largest such services in the UK. He graduated in 1994 from Imperial College, University of London and undertook neurosurgical training at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, Atkinson Morley’s Hospital, and Frenchay Hospital, Bristol.  In 2005/6 he was the Rittersporn Fellow in Pediatric Neurosurgery at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. In 2002 he was awarded the Royal College of Surgeons Mansell Research Fellowship. In 2003 he was awarded the Vesalius Prize by the American Association of Neurological Surgeons. His doctorate thesis was on the endoscopic treatment of communicating hydrocephalus. His current research interests include ICP measurement in zero gravity environments (collaboration with NASA); shunt technology; and the clinical diagnosis and treatment of idiopathic Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus.

Per Kristian Eide, MD, PhD University of Oslo, Norway
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Professor Per Kristian Eide is Professor of Neurosurgery, University of Oslo, Senior Consultant neurosurgeon and head of Neurovascular-Hydrocephalus Research Group, Department of Neurosurgery, Oslo University Hospital-Rikshospitalet, Oslo, Norway. His research interests are cerebrospinal fluid circulation, hydrocephalus, magnetic resonance imaging applied to CSF and hydrocephalus.




Anders Eklund, PhD, Umeå University, Sweden
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Professor Anders Eklund graduated as an MSc in Engineering Physics from Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden, in 1993. He has worked both at the Physics Department, Umeå University and at the research and development department of Biomedical Engineering at Umeå University Hospital. Eklund initiated his doctorate studies in 1997 and obtained a PhD-degree in Biomedical engineering from Umeå University in 2002. Eklund was appointed Associate Professorship in Biomedical Engineering at the Department of Radiation Sciences, Umeå University, in 2005. Since 2012 he is Professor in Biomedical Engineering at Umeå University. His research field is models and measurement techniques concerning physiological fluid dynamics. Especially research related to the hydrodynamic characteristics of the cerebrospinal fluid system and the intraocular system as well as cerebrovascular hemodynamics. Together with Professor Jan Malm, he leads The Umeå Hydrocephalus Research Group, a multidisciplinary team that has funding from the Swedish Research Council, Swedish National Space Board and The Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research. Eklund has published more than 130 peer reviewed journal papers of which more than half are within the field of hydrocephalus and CSF disorders. For his work in the field of hydrocephalus he has together with Prof Malm received the Pudenz award (2020) and held the Marmarou lecture (2018).

Britta Engelhardt, PhD, University of Bern, Switzerland 
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Since 2003 Britta Engelhardt is Professor for Immunobiology and the Director of the Theodor Kocher Institute at the University of Bern in Switzerland. After studying she obtained a PhD in Human Biology (Dr. rer. physiol.) from the Philipps-University, Marburg in Germany in 1991. After a post-doctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Eugene C. Butcher at Stanford University, California, she set up her own research group at the Max-Planck Institute for Physiological and Clinical Research, Bad Nauheim, Germany in the department of Werner Risau in 1993. In 1998 she obtained the Venia Legendi for Immunology and Cell Biology from the Medical Faculty of the Philipps University Marburg, Germany. From 1999 to 2003 she headed her research group at the same institute and the Max-Planck Institute for Vascular Cell Biology in Münster, Germany.
Britta Engelhardt is a renowned expert in brain barriers research.  Her work is dedicated to understanding the role of the brain barriers in maintaining central nervous system (CNS) immune privilege.  Using advanced in vitro and in vivo live cell imaging approaches her laboratory has significantly contributed to the current understanding of the anatomical routes and molecular mechanisms used by immune cells to enter the CNS during immune surveillance and neuroinflammation in the context of multiple sclerosis and ischemic stroke. She has published over 200 manuscripts that are highly cited. She is an opinion leader in her field as shown by her regular presentations as invited and keynote speaker at international meetings.
Britta Engelhardt has served the scientific community by coordinating several national (Singergia UnmetMS, ProDocCellMigration) and international collaborative networks (JUSTBRIN, BtRAIN) dedicated to brain barriers research and neuroinflammation. Together with Peter Vajkoczy she has received the Herman-Rein-Prize for their pioneering in vivo imaging of T cell migration across spinal cord microvessels. She was elected Vice-Chair and Chair of the Gordon Research Conference Barriers of the CNS in 2016 and 2018, respectively. She is the president of the Swiss Society for Microcirculation and Vascular Research (SSMVR) and the Co-President of the Medico Scientific Advisory Board of the Swiss MS Society.

Jean-François Ghersi-Egea, PharmD, PhD, INSERM, France
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A pioneer in the original discovery of the blood-CSF barrier as a detoxifying site for the brain, Dr Jean-François Ghersi-Egea is an INSERM Research Director who graduated from pharmaceutical school and obtained his PhD in Pharmacological Sciences in France. After studying the dynamic of cerebrospinal fluid flow and choroidal transport and metabolism for several years at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, USA and at the Pasteur Institute in Lille, France, Dr Ghersi-Egea is currently leading the “Fluids and barriers of the CNS” Team and the Blood-brain interfaces exploratory facility BIP at the Neuroscience Research Center in Lyon, France. His current fields of research include transport and neuroprotection mechanisms at the developing and adult blood-brain and blood-CSF barriers, and the implication of the choroid plexus-cerebrospinal fluid system in perinatal injuries and neuroinflammation.

Chaitali Ghosh, PhD, Cleveland Clinic Lerner Research Institute, USA
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Dr. Ghosh is an Associate Professor of Molecular Medicine and Biomedical Engineering, Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University. She is also a Staff Scientist in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, Lerner Research Institute, Cleveland Clinic. Dr. Ghosh received her PhD in Toxicology from the Indian Institute of Toxicology Research, Lucknow (India) and Hamdard University, New Delhi (India) with subsequent postdoctoral training in vascular biology and epilepsy at Cleveland Clinic (USA). Dr. Ghosh’s Cerebrovascular Research Laboratory focuses on better understanding brain physiology and function in neurological disorders (e.g., epilepsy and epilepsy with other comorbidities such as stroke, depression). The lab investigates the mechanisms and pathophysiological alterations that could possibly impede drug bioavailability across the dysfunctional blood-brain barrier. In past years, Dr. Ghosh has received several awards and funding support from the National Institutes of Health (National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke [NINDS], National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences [NCATS]), Brain & Behavior Research Foundation (formerly NARSAD), American Heart Association, and Alternatives Research & Development Foundation. Dr. Ghosh was elected a Fellow of the American Heart Association by the AHA’s Stroke Council (November 2017).

Anika Hartz, PhD, University of Kentucky, USA
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Anika Hartz, PhD, is Associate Professor at the Sanders-Brown Center on Aging in the College of Medicine at the University of Kentucky. She received a BS in Pharmacy in 2001 and a PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences/Pharmacology in 2005 from the University of Heidelberg, Germany. From 2005-2007, Dr. Hartz was Postdoctoral Fellow at the NIH/NIEHS in Research Triangle Park, NC and Research Associate from 2007-2010 at the University of Minnesota, Medical School. In 2010, Dr. Hartz was appointed Assistant Professor at the University of Minnesota College of Pharmacy. In 2014, Dr. Hartz joined the University of Kentucky College of Medicine and was promoted to Associate Professor. Her NIH-funded research program is focused on the regulation of blood-brain barrier function in brain disorders with an emphasis on Alzheimer’s disease and the development of new approaches to repair barrier dysfunction.

Jeffrey Iliff, PhD, University of Washington, USA
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Jeffrey Iliff is a Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and of Neurology at the University of Washington School of Medicine. He also serves as the Associate Director for Research at the VISN 20 Mental Illness Research, Education and Clinical Center at the VA Puget Sound Health Care System. He trained in vascular physiology and neuroscience and was part of the research team at the University of Rochester Medical Center that defined a perivascular network, termed the ‘glymphatic system’, which facilitates the exchange of CSF and brain interstitial fluid. His recent studies have shown that the glymphatic system fails in the aging brain and in the young brain after traumatic brain injury. These latter studies suggest that ongoing impairment of the brain’s waste removal system after brain trauma may be the basis for the link between brain trauma (such as concussion) early in life and the development of dementia in the decades that follow. Research in his lab now focuses on identifying the molecular changes that underlie glymphatic system failure with aging and after trauma, extending these experimental studies into human subjects and clinical populations, and discovering ways to co-opt the glymphatic system to improve drug delivery throughout the brain and spinal cord.

Sadhana Jackson, MD, National Institutes of Health, USA 
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Dr. Sadhana Jackson is a physician scientist at the National Institutes of Health. She is a board-certified pediatrician and pediatric hematologist/oncologist with clinical expertise and research efforts related to the blood-brain barrier and malignant glioma. Dr. Jackson’s clinical practice focuses on drug delivery of systemic agents for pediatric malignant brain tumor patients. She has extensive experience with use of intracerebral microdialysis to evaluate optimal drug entry in malignant tumors. Her research focuses on understanding the heterogeneous permeability of the blood brain barrier among malignant brain tumors, ultimately to transiently disrupt the barrier and improve CNS drug entry. Her laboratory studies aim to identify vasoactive mediating drugs that effectively target both aggressive tumor cells and the restrictive neurovascular unit, using various in vitro functional assays and brain tumor models. She is using intracerebral microdialysis, to measure drug concentrations in pediatric patients with recurrent high grade gliomas as part of a multi-institutional clinical trial. 

Marianne Juhler, DMSc (dr.med.), Copenhagen University Hospital, Denmark    
New Content ItemMarianne Juhler is professor of neurosurgery at Copenhagen University Hospital and visiting professor at Aarhus University hospital. MJs main clinical interests are treatment of hydrocephalus, clinical application of ICP monitoring and pediatric neurosurgery. Her research is closely related to her clinical work counting 171 PubMed listed papers (November 2022) and contributions to several textbooks. MJ is the leader of Copenhagen CSF Study Group whose mission is translational integration between experimental and clinical research, exploiting inspiration from clinical problems to formulate research questions, and subsequently applying results from this research to solve notoriously difficult issues about clinical hydrocephalus management. MJ received the Olivecrona Award in 2013 for these achievements.
E-mail: Marianne.juhler@gmail.com

Kristopher T Kahle, MD, PhD, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, USA
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Kristopher T Kahle is Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery and Director of Harvard Center for Hydrocephalus and Neurodevelopmental Disorders  He obtained his MD from Yale School of Medicine and currently is a board-certified pediatric neurosurgeon and RO1-funded scientist with an independent research lab at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. His goal is to translate basic science advances into novel targeted therapeutics for pediatric diseases that have been historically treated using neurosurgery. He has a special interest in human genetics and functional genomics in relation to molecular mechanisms for pediatric neurological diseases including hydrocephalus and cerebrovascular disease.

Takashi Kanda, MD, PhD, Yamaguchi University, Japan
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Takashi Kanda, MD, PhD, is Professor and Chairman of the Department of Neurology and Clinical Neuroscience, Yamaguchi University Graduate School of Medicine, Ube, Japan. Dr Kanda graduated and received MD degree with honors from Tokyo Medical and Dental University School of Medicine, Tokyo, Japan. He completed residency in internal medicine at Tokyo Medical and Dental University Hospital and in neurology at Tokyo Metropolitan Neurological Hospital, Fuchu, Japan. He received PhD degree from Tokyo Medical and Dental University Graduate School in 1985. He was assigned as Assistant Professor (1988-1999), Associate Professor (2000-2004) in the Department of Neurology, Tokyo Medical and Dental University and moved to Yamaguchi University as Professor and Chairman in 2004.
For the past decade, Dr Kanda’s research has focused on the cell biology of BBB/BNB and pathophysiology of neuroimmunological disorders. He is now appointed as Editor-in-Chief of Clinical and Experimental Neuroimmunology launched in 2010, an official journal of Japanese Society for Neuroimmunology.

Prof. Dr. med. Dr. hc. Uwe Kehler, Asklepios Klinik Altona, Hamburg, Germany
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Uwe Kehler is director of the neurosurgical department of the Asklepios Klinik Altona in Hamburg, Germany and affiliated to the Medical University of Lübeck, Germany. He studied medicine at the Universities of Cluj, Romania and Hamburg, Germany and did his residency at the University Hospital Lübeck, where he received his PhD about clinical and experimental contributions to endoscopy of the cerebral ventricles. His main clinical and research interests are adult hydrocephalus, skull base tumors, and cranial nerve compression syndromes. Prof. Kehler is the Co-President of the Romanian- German Neurosurgical Training Courses and since 2021 president of the Hydrocephalus Society. He is also honorary doctor of the Nicolae-Testemițanu-University, Chisinau, Moldawia.

Jeong Hun Kim, MD, PhD, Seoul National University, South Korea
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Jeong Hun Kim, MD, PhD, Professor of Department of Ophthalmology & Biomedical Sciences at Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea, is a clinician-scientist of 10 years’ experience in the field of the blood-retinal barrier (BRB) and retinal angiogenesis-related retinopathy (Retinopathy of Prematurity, Diabetic Retinopathy, Age-related Macular Degeneration as well as Retinoblastoma), with >100 publications and reviews. As a young clinician-scientist, he has led a translational research laboratory of Fight-against Angiogenesis-Related Blindness (FARB) Lab since 2009. His research interests are as follows; 1) Blood- Retinal Barrier: Regulatory mechanisms to form and maintain blood-retinal barrier at the interface of neurogenesis, gliogenesis and angiogenesis, 2) Retinal vascular diseases including: retinopathy of prematurity, diabetic retinopathy, age-related macular degeneration, 3) Tumor angiogenesis in retinoblastoma, and 4) Normal eye development.

Karin Kockum, PhD, Umea University, Sweden
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Karin Kockum graduated from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm in 2008, and continued her medical training in Östersund, Sweden. Along with residency in diagnostic radiology she completed her PhD studies in 2020, defending her thesis on imaging in idiopathic normal pressure hydrocephalus (iNPH). The thesis named “Imaging in idiopathic Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus: The value of structured radiological evaluation” focuses on the development of iNPH Radscale, a scale for objective evaluation of the radiological signs of iNPH. She currently combines clinical work as Chief of Department with research to further validate the iNPH Radscale to facilitate clinical use.


Vartan Kurtcuoglu, PhD, University of Zurich, Switzerland
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Vartan Kurtcuoglu is an Associate Professor of Computational and Experimental Physiology with joint appointments at the faculties of medicine and science of the University of Zurich, Switzerland, and is an accredited professor at the Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering at ETH Zurich. He obtained his diploma in mechanical engineering in 2002 from ETH Zurich, and received his PhD from the same institution in 2006 with a thesis on the computational modelling of the cerebral ventricular cerebrospinal fluid system. In 2011, he was a visiting scientist in medicine at Harvard Medical School and a visiting scientist at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Cardiovascular Medicine, in Boston. Dr. Kurtcuoglu is the head of The Interface Group that focuses on the convergence of engineering, biological and medical research for the understanding of fluid flow and transport processes in the human body in general and in the central nervous system in particular.
Website: http://interfacegroup.ch

Maria K Lehtinen, PhD, Boston Children's Hospital, USA
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Maria Lehtinen received her Ph.D. in Neurobiology from Harvard University, where she trained with Azad Bonni on signaling mechanisms that regulate neuronal survival and death. She joined Anna-Elina Lehesjoki’s lab for her first postdoc at the Folkhälsan Institute of Genetics, University of Helsinki, where she investigated the role of redox homeostasis in progressive myoclonus epilepsy. She then carried out a second postdoc with Christopher A. Walsh at Boston Children’s Hospital where she discovered that secreted factors in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) play an active role in instructing the development of the mammalian cerebral cortex. The Lehtinen lab, located in the Department of Pathology at Boston Children’s Hospital, carries out basic and translational research on CSF-based signaling. She has been supported by the NIH, NSF, Ellison/AFAR, and the Sigrid Juselius Foundation, and is currently an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellow.

David D Limbrick, MD, PhD, Washington University School of Medicine, USA
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David D. Limbrick, Jr., M.D., Ph.D. is currently Chief and Professor of Neurological Surgery and Pediatrics at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri. He is a pediatric neurosurgeon with clinical and research interests in improving the diagnosis and management of children with hydrocephalus. He is actively engaged in clinical research in hydrocephalus through the Hydrocephalus Clinical Research Network but also maintains a busy laboratory effort investigating protein mediators of neurodevelopment in infants and children with hydrocephalus. Dr Limbrick is actively involved in the development of advanced MRI techniques, such as diffusion tensor imaging and resting state functional connectivity, as tools to examine the effects of hydrocephalus on neurodevelopment and structural and functional neural networks.

Ethan Lippmann, PhD, Vanderbilt University, USA
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Ethan received his bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and his doctoral degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He was a postdoctoral fellow in Biomedical Engineering at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery before starting his independent career at Vanderbilt University, where he is currently an Associate Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering with courtesy appointments in Biomedical Engineering, Neurology, Interdisciplinary Materials Science, and Chemical and Physical Biology. Ethan’s research program generally focuses on modeling, understanding, and treating human disease, spanning both the central nervous system and peripheral tissue compartments. In recognition of his recent research efforts, he has received a NARSAD Young Investigator Award from the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation, a Ben Barres Early Career Acceleration Award from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation, and a Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering Young Investigator Award from the Biomedical Engineering Society. He is also a two-time recipient of his department’s teaching award and recently received the School of Engineering’s teaching award in recognition of his contributions to undergraduate education.

Paul Lockman, PhD, BSN, WVU School of Pharmacy, USA
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Paul Lockman earned his B.S. in Nursing from West Texas A&M University, after which he practiced in intensive care, clinical toxicology and emergency medicine, then went on to earn his Ph.D. (Pharmaceutical Sciences) at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center. Dr Lockman has published ~ 100 peer-reviewed manuscripts and or book chapters. In total, his research program as the Principal Investigator has brought in over $17 million extramural dollars and he has helped secure an additional $11.2 million as a co-investigator on projects. His research has been recognized by being named a Benedum Fellow as well as the receipt of the Mylan Endowed Chair (WVU) and with a Presidential and Alumni Research Award (TTUHSC).  Peer recognition of his work is evidenced through over 6100 citations, invitations to speak at nearly 70 symposia, invitation-only conferences, universities, or drug companies as well as serving as a NIH reviewer and Chair for numerous study sections. 

Irena Loryan, MD, PhD, Uppsala University, Sweden
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Dr. Irena Loryan is researcher in the translational pharmacokinetics-pharmacodynamics (tPKPD) group in the Department of Pharmacy, Uppsala University, Sweden. She received her M.D. in 2001 and Ph.D. in pharmacology and biochemistry in 2007 from Yerevan State Medical University, Armenia. She then worked as a post-doctoral fellow at the Division of Pharmacogenetics at the Department of Pharmacology and Physiology, Karolinska Institute (Prof. Magnus Ingelman-Sundberg Lab). Since 2011, she worked as a post-doctoral fellow at the Department of Pharmaceutical Biosciences, Uppsala University (Prof. Margareta Hammarlund-Udenaes Lab) in collaboration with Janssen Pharmaceutica, Beerse, Belgium. Her current research interest focuses on neuropharmacokinetics of small and large molecular weight drugs, implying mechanistic understanding of drug disposition in central and peripheral nervous systems involving passage across CNS and PNS barriers, distribution within parenchyma and elimination processes in health and disease, with focus on neurodegenerative diseases. Specific emphasis is on investigation of   PKPD relationship in discrete brain regions and development of new methods to study it. Investigation of translational aspects of neuropharmacokinetics from in vitro models to preclinical species and eventually to patients to support CNS drug discovery is the ultimate goal of the studies.

Fredrik Lundin, MD, PhD, Linköping University Hospital, Sweden
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Fredrik Lundin, MD, PhD and Associate Professor, Researcher at the Department of Biomedical and Clinical Sciences. He is the Head of Department of Clinical Neurology and Senior Consultant in Neurology at Linköping University Hospital, Linköping Sweden. Dr Lundin´s research interest is focused on CSF-related conditions, mainly Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus regarding pathophysiology, radiological techniques, CSF-biomarkers, clinical evaluation methods of gait and balance and rehabilitation for improving outcome after shunt surgery. In 2012 he defended his thesis: Idiopathic Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus -Aspects on Pathophysiology, Clinical Characteristics and Evaluation Methods. Besides his enthusiasm for hydrocephalus, he has a clinical and scientific interest in movement disorders, especially dystonia and Parkinsons.

Mitsuihito Mase, MD, PhD, Nagoya City University, Japan
New Content ItemCurrently I am a Director, Nagoya City University Hospital, and Professor and Chairman, Department of Neurosurgery, Nagoya City University Graduate School of Medical Sciences and president of Japan Society of Hydrocephalus and CSF. I graduated from Nagoya City University Medical School in Japan. Then, I started  training as a Neurosurgeon. I also graduated from Nagoya City University Graduate School of Medical Sciences where research was on ischemic brain edema and intracranial pressure. I was a Senior Registrar, of Department of Neurosurgery, the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurological surgery, Queen Square, London from 1992-1993, under Professor Lindsay Simon. I was also a Visiting Research Fellow, Institute of Neurology, Queen Square, London. On returning to Japan, I started research into hydrocephalus and CSF flow using MRI. Now, I have Board and Instructor of The Japan Neurosurgical Society, Japanese Society on Surgery for Cerebral Stroke, The Japan Stroke Society, The Japanese Society of Neuroendovascular Treatment, Japanese Society of Neuroendscopy, and The Japan Society of Neurotraumatology. Recently, I am very interested and continuing research in water turnover in brain and CSF and CSF physiology.
E-mail: mitmase@med.nagoya-cu.ac.jp

J Gordon McComb, MD, Childrens Hospital Los Angeles, USA
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J. Gordon McComb is Professor of Neurological Surgery at the University of Southern California/Keck School of Medicine and Chief Emeritus of the Division of Neurosurgery. Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. He graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York, in 1961, with a degree in Chemical Engineering. He then earned his medical degree from the University of Miami in 1965, followed by a surgical internship at the University of California Los Angeles. He did a year of pediatric residency at CHLA before going on active duty with the US Air Force, where he spent 2 years in a Vietnamese hospital attending to pediatric and adult civilian patients, many of who were casualties of the war. His neurosurgical residency was at Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston and additional periods of training were undertaken at the University of California in San Francisco and Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas. In London he worked with Hugh Davson, a noted physiologist, investigating the pathophysiology of hydrocephalus, a research and clinical interest he has maintained throughout his subsequent career in Los Angeles. He has published hundreds of clinical and basic research papers, book chapters, and abstracts that have advanced the diagnosis and treatment of infants and children with neurosurgical disorders. His basic research interests continue to focus on CSF physiology, the patho-physiology of hydrocephalus, and the nature of the blood-brain barrier.

Jaleel Miyan, PhD, University of Manchester, UK  
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Dr Jaleel Miyan obtained his undergraduate degree in Neurobiology from the University of Sussex (1978) and his PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Glasgow (1982). He held post-doctoral positions at the University of Edinburgh and the University of Sheffield before winning a Royal Society University Research Fellowship in 1986 which he held until 1996 at the Universities of Edinburgh and Manchester. He is currently a Senior Lecturer in Neuroscience at The University of Manchester, Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and Fellow of The Royal Society of Biology. He runs an active research group investigating two research areas, the role of cerebrospinal fluid in the development and function of the cerebral cortex, and the hard-wired relationship between neural and immune/host defence systems. His research has had funding from the Wellcome Trust, Medical research Council, BBSRC, The Charles Wolfson Charitable Trust, Africa Healthcare Development Trust and from the British Council INSPIRE Scheme. He is joint owner of a patent through the University of Manchester for his work on hydrocephalus and is currently organising human clinical trials for the treatment that decreases the risk for hydrocephalus in the H-Tx rat. He has won awards for innovative teaching methods and his research. He is currently President of the Society for Research into Hydrocephalus and Spina bifida.
E-mail:J.miyan@manchester.ac.uk
Web page:http://www.ls.manchester.ac.uk/people/profile/index.asp?id=2534

Joseph Nicolazzo, PhD, Monash University, Australia
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Joseph Nicolazzo graduated with a PhD in 2004 from Monash University (Australia), where he now holds an academic position as Associate Professor and Associate Dean, Graduate Research. His main research focus is on central nervous system (CNS) drug delivery and the role of brain endothelial cell membrane transporters and intracellular carrier proteins in facilitating blood-brain barrier (BBB) transport of endogenous and exogenous molecules. Using in vitro, in situ and in vivo methods, Joseph’s research group is also investigating how drug transport across the BBB alters in various disease states, including Alzheimer’s disease and furthermore, his group is exploring the involvement of dysfunctional BBB transport proteins in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease. His research has been funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia and various Australian philanthropic bodies. He received the Faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences Young Investigator Award in 2009, Early Career Research Award in 2013, and Excellence in Postgraduate Supervision Award in 2018, as well as an International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP) Award of Recognition (2014). Joseph is also currently the Treasurer of the Australasian Pharmaceutical Science Association.  

Martha E O'Donnell, PhD, University of California, Davis, USA
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Martha E. O’Donnell, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Department of Physiology and Membrane Biology at the University of California, Davis School of Medicine. She received her Ph.D. from University of California and postdoctoral training from University of Chicago. Her research focus is on cellular mechanisms of brain water and electrolyte homeostasis in health and disease. Studies have included investigations of 1) blood-brain barrier Na transporter contributions to edema and infarct in ischemic stroke and 2) blood-brain barrier and astrocyte ion transporter roles in the pathophysiology in diabetes and diabetic ketoacidosis. Her laboratory uses a variety of in vitro and in vivo experimental approaches.

Yuri Persidsky, MD, PhD, Temple University School of Medicine, USA
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Dr Persidsky is the Professor of Temple University School of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA (USA). He is an avid researcher who has 135 publications in the area of blood brain barrier compromise in HIV-1 CNS infection, neuroinflammation, and alcohol abuse. Dr Persidsky is the principal investigator on several NIH funded projects. In addition to serving as an ad hoc reviewer for countless journals, Dr Persidsky has held editorial positions in Journal of Neurovirology, Journal of Histochemistry and Cytochemistry, and Journal of Neuroimmune Pharmacology. Dr Persidsky is the past-President for the Society of Neuroimmune Pharmacology and is a member of several professional societies including the College of American Pathologists, American Society for Investigative Pathology, the American Society of Virology, the Society of Neuroscience, the International Society of Neuroimmunology, and the International Society of Neurovirology. He received his MD at Kiev State Medical Institute (Kiev, Ukraine) in 1978 and Ph.D. in Pathology in 1984. After completion of residency training in Pathology, he rose through the ranks and in 2006 was appointed Professor of Pathology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. In 2008 Dr Persidsky became Professor and Chair of Pathology at Temple University School of Medicine, Philadelphia.

Michelle E Pizzo, PhD, Denali Therapeutics, USA

Sara Qvarlander, PhD, Umeå University, Sweden
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Sara Qvarlander is a biomedical engineer and researcher at the University Hospital of Northern Sweden and Umeå University. After a degree in in Engineering Physics from KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Dr. Qvarlander pursued a PhD in Biomedical Engineering at the Department of Radiation Sciences at Umeå University. She completed her PhD, which focused on analysis of ICP pulsatility and postural CSF dynamics, in 2013. She conducted post-doctoral research at the Neurological Institute of the Cleveland Clinic in 2014. Currently Dr. Qvarlander works with the Umeå Hydrocephalus research group. Her research interests include modeling and analysis of intracranial pressure and the cerebrospinal fluid dynamics, development and validation of methods for lumbar infusion measurements, Idiopathic Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus (INPH), Idiopathic Intracranial Hypertension (IIH), as well as applications of MRI and machine learning in INPH and MRI-based measurements of CSF and blood flow in the brain.

Zoran Redzic, PhD, Kuwait University, Kuwait 
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Dr Zoran Redzic graduated in Medicine (MD) in the School of Medicine, University of Belgrade, Serbia in 1991. He did MSc degree in Neurosciences 1991-1993 and PhD in Medicine 1993-1996. From 1996-1998 he was Assistant Professor and then from 1998- Associate Professor at the School of Medicine, University of Belgrade. In 2001 he was granted a 2-year International Fellowship by the Wellcome Trust and, thus, moved to King’s College London where he did his research on choroid plexus physiology with late Dr Malcolm Segal. In 2003 he moved to the University of Cambridge, where he spent one year working on choroid plexus and brain endothelial cells primary cultures. From 2004 he has worked in the Faculty of Medicine in Kuwait and is currently professor of Physiology and Head of Department since 2014. He spent one year, 2011-12, as a visiting scientist in University of Oxford, working with Prof. Alastair Buchan. His main research interests are hypoxic brain and signaling between the brain cells that is triggered when the brain becomes hypoxic or ischemic. Also, he is interested in choroid plexus physiology and physiology of the brain extracellular fluids (the interstitial fluid and the cerebrospinal fluid).

Marie E Rognes, PhD, Simula Research Laboratory, Norway
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Marie E. Rognes is Chief Research Scientist in Scientific Computing and Numerical Analysis at Simula Research Laboratory, Oslo, Norway. She received her Ph.D from the University of Oslo in 2009 with an extended stay at the University of Minneapolis, Twin Cities. She has been at Simula Research Laboratory since 2009, led the Department for Biomedical Computing from 2012-2016 and currently leads a number of research projects focusing on mathematical modelling and numerical simulation of cerebral fluid flow. Rognes is the winner of the 2015 Wilkinson Prize for Numerical Software, the 2018 Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters Prize for Young Researchers within the Natural Sciences, and a Founding Member of the Young Academy of Norway. Rognes main research focus is the development and analysis of mathematical models and large-scale numerical simulations of brain mechanics across scales - from the cellular to the organ level - including the interaction between solid and fluid dynamics and glial electrophysiology.

Ignacio Romero, PhD, The Open University, UK
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Dr Ignacio (Nacho) Romero is a Professor in the School of Life, Health and Chemical Sciences at The Open University, United Kingdom. He obtained his PhD from King’s College London (KCL), UK, in 1993 on the toxicology of the blood-brain barrier (BBB) and since then he has been involved in >80 publications and reviews on various aspects related to BBB physiology and pathophysiology, in particular in neuroinflammation. He was a post-doctoral fellow at the Institut Cochin de Génétique Moléculaire, Paris, France, and at the Institute of Ophthalmology, University College London, UK, before being appointed to faculty at The Open University. He is currently the Director of the Biomedical Research Network and heads a group focused on the biology of the neurovascular unit at the cellular level both in health and disease. His more recent research focuses on understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying BBB dysfunction in several disease states, such as Alzheimer’s disease and multiple sclerosis, and in ageing. In particular, he is currently investigating the transcriptional and post-transcriptional regulation of human brain endothelial cell phenotype under normal and inflammatory conditions. He currently organises an annual meeting, the UK & Ireland Early Career BBB Symposium, focused on training skills for postgraduates in the BBB field, and helps organise two meetings a year for the KCL BBB Consortium with Industry.

Andy Y. Shih, PhD, Seattle Children's Research Institute, USA
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Dr. Shih is an Associate Professor at Seattle Children’s Research Institute and the University of Washington. He received his Ph.D. at the University of British Columbia and post-doctoral training at UC San Diego. His work has contributed to the development of in vivo two-photon imaging methods for measurement and manipulation of cerebral microvessels in rodent models. The research performed by his team has led to new discoveries related to the consequence of small-scale stroke, mechanisms of neurovascular coupling, and regulation of blood flow through brain capillaries by pericytes. His lab seeks to obtain a clear understanding the basic biology underlying vascular physiology, and then layer on the complexities of factors involved in human disease, to identify targets and approaches for disease treatment. Dr. Shih’s work has been funded through major grants from the National Institutes of Health (NINDS and NIA), and through foundation grants from the Dana Foundation, American Heart Association, Alzheimer’s Association, A New Vision award, Albert Trust and others.

Eric V Shusta, PhD, University of Wisconsin, USA
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Dr Eric V. Shusta is Howard Curler Distinguished Professor in Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr Shusta has held a research focus in the molecular level analysis of the blood-brain barrier, employing cutting-edge genomic, proteomic, and molecular evolution techniques to better understand how the blood-brain barrier functions and how to circumvent it for the delivery of brain therapeutics. Dr Shusta has also been elected to the Governing Council of the International Brain Barriers Society.



Helen Stolp, PhD, Royal Veterinary College, UK
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Dr. Helen Stolp graduated from the University of Tasmania with a Bachelor of Science (Honours) in 2001. She was awarded a PhD position in the Department of Pharmacology, University of Melbourne in 2002, completed in 2006. She undertook post-doctoral research at the University of Melbourne, University of Oxford and King’s College London before being appointed to a lectureship at the Royal Veterinary College in London in 2017.
Her research aims to understand the pathophysiology of neurodevelopmental injury, and to utilize this knowledge to target therapeutic and diagnostic tools. Dr Stolp’s research focuses on the capacity of inflammation to affect developmental processes, from angiogenesis and blood-brain barrier function, to short-term and long-term consequences of inflammation on neural proliferation, differentiation and connectivity. She is particularly interested in identifying critical windows where injury interacts with ongoing neurodevelopment, providing opportunities for therapeutic intervention.

Masanori Tachikawa, PhD, Tohoku University, Japan 
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Dr Masanori Tachikawa is currently a Professor in Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Tokushima University. He received his PhD on Pharmaceutical Sciences from Tohoku University, Japan, in 2005 and did post-doctoral research training in the field of neuroscience at the University of British Columbia, Canada. He had worked in Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences at University of Toyama (the former Toyama Medical and Pharmaceutical University), Japan, as an Assistant Professor, from 2005 to 2011. He has published 126 peer-reviewed articles and 13 book chapters/reviews. His research experience covers the pharmacokinetics, imaging, pathophysiology and anatomy of the biological brain barriers. He is now working on the application of microfluidics and mass spectrometry to the systems biology and pharmacokinetics of the brain barrier logistics.

Robert G Thorne, PhD, Denali Therapeutics & University of Minnesota, USA
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The focus of Dr. Thorne’s research has been to develop a mechanistic understanding of drug delivery to the brain. One of his main interests has been the study of diffusive and convective transport within the extracellular and perivascular spaces of the central nervous system – his research in the field spanning over three decades has consistently aimed to leverage knowledge of physiology, CNS structure, and the blood-brain and blood-cerebrospinal fluid barriers with a variety of methods, in order to identify how best to deliver peptides, proteins, oligonucleotides, and gene therapy vectors to the brain following intraparenchymal, intrathecal, intranasal, and/or systemic administration. His more recent work at Denali Therapeutics has focused on novel blood-brain barrier transport vehicles facilitating the brain delivery of disease-modifying antibody or enzyme drugs and adeno-associated virus-based vectors for CNS gene therapy. Dr. Thorne’s Denali research seeks to enable new first-in-class CNS treatments for neurodegenerative diseases, lysosomal storage disorders, and brain cancers underpinned by genetics, biology, and biomarker-based approaches. He is extensively involved in both preclinical and clinical research.

Mats Tullberg, MD, PhD, Sahlgrenska University Hospital, Sweden
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Mats Tullberg is a Professor of Neurology and Senior Consultant neurologist at the Department of Neurology, Institute of Neuroscience and Physiology, Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg and Sahlgrenska University Hospital, Gothenburg, Sweden. He was Former Chief Medical Officer and Chief Quality Officer, Sahlgrenska University Hospital, Former Head of the Department of Ophthalmology, Sahlgrenska University Hospital, Former president, Nordic Hydrocephalus Academy. His research focus is on pathophysiological, diagnostic and clinical aspects of hydrocephalus, specifically normal pressure hydrocephalus (NPH), other CSF dynamic and neurodegenerative CNS disorders. His thesis, "White matter pathology in normal pressure hydrocephalus and subcortical arteriosclerotic encephalopathy: clinical, CSF and MRI aspects" was defended in 2001 and followed by a year as post-doc at UC Davis, California. He is currently the head of the Hydrocephalus research unit, Sahlgrenska Academy/Sahlgrenska University Hospital and the President-elect of the Hydrocephalus Society. He was the meeting president of Hydrocephalus 2022, the 14th scientific meeting of the Hydrocephalus Society.

Akihiko Urayama, PhD, University of Texas, USA
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Dr. Akihiko Urayama is an Associate Professor in the Department of Neurology, University of Texas Medical School at Houston. He received his Ph.D. from University of Shizuoka, Japan, and postdoctoral training in the fields of cerebrovascular biology and neurodegenerative diseases. Dr. Urayama focuses on the aging-associated changes in the blood-brain barrier (BBB), including (i) regulation of endosomal receptor trafficking, (ii) mechanosensing in the BBB, and (iii) cerebral vascular remodelling in aging and neurodegenerative diseases. His laboratory uses a variety of in vitro and in vivo imaging approaches.


Johan Virhammar, PhD, Uppsala University Hospital, Sweden
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Dr. Virhammar’s interest in CSF disorders began already during medical school when he started his research in normal pressure hydrocephalus. He received his PhD at the Department of Neuroscience, Uppsala University, Sweden with a thesis focusing on imaging in normal pressure hydrocephalus. Dr. Virhammar now works as a neurologist at Uppsala University Hospital and the main focus of his research is neuroimaging, CSF biomarkers and pathophysiology primarily in the area of normal pressure hydrocephalus.



Mark E Wagshul, PhD, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, USA
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Dr Wagshul received his PhD in atomic physics from Harvard University and did his postdoctoral training as a National Research Fellow at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, MD; it was only after his postdoctoral training that he began pursuing medical applications. His first faculty position was at Stony Brook University, where he investigated the use of hyperpolarized gases for functional pulmonary imaging. After a short hiatus from academia at a start-up company developing technology for image-guided high intensity focused surgery, he returned to Stony Brook in 2002, when he first cultivated his interest in CSF disorders. In particular, one of his primary research interests is the role of CSF flow and pulsatility in the development and progression of brain damage in hydrocephalus. He served as the Director of the MRI Rseearch Centre at Stony Brook from 2002-2009. Dr Wagshul joined the faculty of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and the Gruss MR Research centre in NY, as an Associate Professor, where he continues to study CSF flow-related disorders, as well as other neuroimaging applications such as traumatic brain injury and sleep apnea. Most recently, he is focusing on the role of brain compliance in pedicatric hydrocephalus and the specific effect of changes in brain compliance as it relates to slit ventricle syndrome and chronic headache in shunted hydrocephalus. He is applying the new technique of MR Elastography to visualize local changes in brain compliance and its relationship to disease severity and outcome from surgery.

Jack A Wells, PhD, University College London, UK
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My research career has focused on the development of translatable imaging techniques for non-invasive assessment of brain function using MRI. In 2010, I completed my PhD in MRI physics supervised by Dr David Thomas and Prof Roger Ordidge. I then moved to the UCL Centre for Advanced Biomedical Imaging, developing methods for combined fMRI and optogenetics. In 2014, I worked as a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the National Institute of Radiological Sciences in Chiba, Japan. In 2016 I was responsible for running the new MSc in Advanced Biomedical Imaging at UCL. In 2017, I began a Wellcome Trust/Royal Society Sir Henry Dale Fellowship centered on imaging CSF-mediated brain clearance pathways.  In 2022 I was awarded a Wellcome Trust Career Development Award to understand the role of the choroid plexus in the development of dementia using non-invasive MRI techniques.

Michael A Williams, MD, University of Washington School of Medicine, USA
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Michael A. Williams, MD is Professor of Neurology and Neurological Surgery at the University of Washington School of Medicine. Dr. Williams received his MD in 1985 from Indiana University, where he also trained in Neurology from 1986-1989.  He had a two-year fellowship in Neuro Critical Care at Johns Hopkins from 1989 to 1991, and was an attending physician in the Neuro ICU until 2002.  He established the Johns Hopkins Adult Hydrocephalus Center in 2001. Dr. Williams has been at the University of Washington since 2016 and leads the program for Adult and Transitional Hydrocephalus and Disorders of CSF Circulation. He receives research funding from NASA to investigate the role of ICP in spaceflight associated neuro-ocular syndrome (SANS). Dr. Williams is an internationally recognized expert in adult hydrocephalus, and has published more than 80 research papers. He co-chaired the first-ever NINDS Workshop on hydrocephalus in 2005, helped to create the ISHCSF in 2008, and was its president from 2012 to 2014. He is active with the Hydrocephalus Association, serving as a member of the Board of Directors, and is the Chair of the Medical Advisory Board. He is on the steering committee to update the International Guidelines for the Diagnosis and Treatment of Idiopathic Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus. 

Wei Zheng, PhD, Purdue University, USA

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Dr Wei Zheng is a Professor of Toxicology and University Faculty Scholar at Purdue University. Dr Zheng is a recognized scholar in the fields of metal-induced neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease and essential tremors. Dr Zheng received his B.S. and M.S. from Zhejiang University and his Ph.D. from University of Arizona. He held a joint appointment as an Assistant Professor (1993-2000) and later Associate Professor (2000-2003) in School of Public Health and College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University in New York City. He came to Purdue in 2003 and became a Full Professor in 2006. On Sept 1, 2008, Dr Zheng assumed the leadership as the Head of the School of Health Sciences, a unit that comprises more than 50 faculty and staff, 600 undergraduate majors and 40 graduate students, at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, USA.
During his tenure at Columbia and now at Purdue, his research team has conducted a pioneer investigation exploring contributions of the brain barrier system, especially the blood-CSF barrier, in chemical-induced neurodegenerative disorders. He is specialized in manganese-induced parkinsonism, lead-induced learning defects, brain clearance of beta-amyloids in Alzheimer’s disease, and chelating therapy of metal toxicities. His research discovers the molecular mechanism by which iron (Fe) and copper (Cu) are transported by the blood-CSF barrier and environmental exposure to toxic metal managnese may alter these processes and lead to neurodegenerative injury. Recently, Dr Zheng has translated his research to human population aiming at discovery of biomarkers for manganese-induced parkinsonism by MRI/MRS and therapeutic treatment for manganism parkinsonian patients. He has authored one book, 125 original research papers, book chapters, and review articles, with more than 155 research abstracts and meeting proceedings. His research has been supported by National Institute of Health grants, U.S. Dept of Defense contracts, and other awards from pharmaceutical companies such as Johnson & Johnson and Eli Lilly.
Dr Zheng has been serving as the member of the Editorial Board of Experimental Biology and Medicine, Journal of Toxicology, Fluids and Barriers of CNS (Cerebrospinal Fluid Research), and Toxicology Letters (2004-2008). He was a standing member of NIH/Environmental Health Sciences Review Committee (2003-2007) and currently is a standing member of NIH/Neurotoxicology and Alcohol study section (2008-2012), two expert panels that evaluate and recommend federal research funds. He also serves as a neurotoxicology consultant to both pharmaceutical industry and law firms for brain bioavailability of neurotoxicants or drugs. He is active in the Society for Neurosciences, the Society of Toxicology (SOT) and the International Association of Neurotoxicology. He has organized, as the chairman or chairperson, 14 international symposia, workshops, and conferences since 1999. Most recently, he served as the President of SOT Metals Specialty Section (2009-2010) and received a Distinguished Chinese Toxicologist Award by American Association of Chinese Toxicologists.

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  • ISSN: 2045-8118 (electronic)

Fluids and Barriers of the CNS

ISSN: 2045-8118