Jonathan Kipnis, PhD
Washington University in St. Louis
Lab Website
About the Speaker: Dr. Jonathan (Jony) Kipnis is BJC Investigator, Alan A. and Edith L. Wolff Distinguished Professor of Pathology and Immunology and Professor of Neurology, Neuroscience, and Neurosurgery at Washington University in St. Louis, School of Medicine. He is also the inaugural Director of Brain immunology and Glia (BIG) Center at Washington University. Jony graduated from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, where he was Sir Charles Clore Scholar and a recipient of distinguished prize for scientific achievements awarded by the Israeli Parliament, The Knesset.
The Kipnis lab is dedicated to unraveling the intricate interactions between the immune system and the central nervous system (CNS). It explores the cellular and molecular mechanisms that underpin these interactions across a spectrum of conditions, including neurodegenerative, neurodevelopmental, and mental disorders, as well as in physiological states like healthy aging. Dr. Kipnis and his colleagues discovered that brain function is partly reliant on the integrity and functionality of the immune system, with immune molecules (cytokines) playing neuromodulatory roles. The fascination with immunity and its role in neurophysiology is what brought the lab to a breakthrough discovery of meningeal lymphatic vessels that drain the CNS into the peripheral lymph nodes and thus serve as a physical connection between the brain and the immune system. This finding challenged the prevailing mechanisms underlying CNS “immune privilege” and opened new avenues to mechanistically study the nature of neuroimmune interactions under physiological and pathological conditions. The implications of this work are broad and range from autism to Alzheimer’s disease through neuroinflammatory conditions, such as Multiple Sclerosis. Kipnis lab has also identified the skull and vertebrae bone marrow niches as local immune reservoirs for the brain and the spinal cord, whose role in neurological disorders is yet unknown. Recently, the lab has unveiled new structures involved in waste removal from the brain, which are
also utilized by immune cells for brain surveillance and during pathological neuroinflammation. Additionally, the team has demonstrated that synchronized neuronal oscillations during sleep facilitate the movement of cerebrospinal fluid through the dense brain parenchyma. These discoveries not only elucidate the role of macroscopic brain waves during sleep but also offer novel insights that could lead to more effective treatments for neurodegenerative diseases. Earlier this year, Kipnis lab also reported on engineered T cells that could be therapeutically used for neurodegenerative diseases.
Dr. Kipnis is a member of National Academy of Medicine and among other awards, he is a recipient NIH Director’s Pioneer award for 2018 to explore in more depth neuro-immune interactions in healthy and diseased brain.
For Further Information, Contact: Clark Kellogg at kellogg@waisman.wisc.edu
The seminar series is funded by the John D. Wiley Conference Center Fund, the Friends of the Waisman Center and Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) grant P50HD105353.
