Join us for the first talk of the SUNS Introduction to Clinical Neuroscience Research Series 2024/25 with Dr. Thomas Carmichael: The Brain Microenvironment of Stroke Patients, Developing Therapies to Promote Recovery
S. Thomas Carmichael is Professor and Chair of the Department of Neurology and Professor in the Department of Neurobiology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He has active laboratory and clinical interests in stroke and neurorehabilitation and how the brain repairs from injury. He received his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from Washington University School of Medicine in 1993 and 1994, and completed a Neurology residency at Washington University School of Medicine, serving as Chief Resident. Dr. Carmichael was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute postdoctoral fellow at UCLA from 1998-2001. He has been on the UCLA faculty since 2001. Dr. Carmichael’s laboratory studies the molecular and cellular mechanisms of neural repair after stroke and other forms of brain injury. This research focuses on the processes of axonal sprouting and neural stem cell and progenitor responses after stroke, and on neural stem cell transplantation. Dr. Carmichael is an attending physician on the General Neurology and outpatient clinical services at UCLA.
Dr. Carmichael has published important papers on stroke recovery that have defined mechanisms of plasticity and repair. These include the fact that the stroke produces partially damaged circuits that limit recovery, but can be restored to normal functioning with newly applied experimental drugs. His work has identified brain “growth programs” that are activated by stroke and lead to the formation of new connections, how these growth programs change with age, and how specific molecules in the aged brain block the formation of new connections and of recovery.
Talk details:
There is limited recovery in stroke. Molecular and cellular studies of brain repair processes identify several key signaling systems that might serve as targets for new therapeutics. These systems control neuronal excitability or neuronal network activity, and often underlie normal processes of learning and memory. Several recent and ongoing clinical trials have come out of this work.