Nader Ghasemlou, PhD

The Pain Chronobiology & Neuroimmunology Laboratory is working to better understand how the nervous and immune systems communicate to cause diseases of the nervous system, including pain, spinal cord injury, and multiple sclerosis. All organs (apart from the brain) are densely innervated with sensory neuron, serving to sense damage and external stimuli, and are also populated by resident and circulating immune cells, that respond to injury and disease. 

Translational circadian medicine: Bridging the gap between the laboratory and clinic is a major focus of our work. Using ecological momentary assessment (e-diary), longitudinal tissue collection, and multi-omic analyses, our team seeks to define changes at the person-level in both health and disease. This strategy of personalized and precision medicine can be used to create new treatment strategies that may help “reset" the body’s misaligned internal clocks. 

Circadian neuroimmunology: Communication between the nervous and immune systems can both exacerbate and reduce damage, depending on the injury or disease. To further complicate matters, these two critical physiological systems are regulated by circadian (or 24-hour) rhythms at the molecular, cellular, and systems levels. Here, we are studying how communication between resident and recruited immune cells are affected by individual molecular clocks as well as time-of-day changes. 

Gut-CNS axis: The gut serves as the largest reservoir of peripheral immune cells, where they encounter the resident microbiome. The communication between immune cells and "gut bugs” can polarize these cells towards either pro- or anti-inflammatory phenotypes. We are working to understand whether cells in the gut can alter the central nervous system, particularly in spinal cord injury and multiple sclerosis.