Jaime Imitola

Jaime Imitola is an American neuroscientist,[1] neurologist and immunologist. Imitola's clinical and research program focuses on Progressive Multiple Sclerosis and the molecular and cellular mechanisms of neurodegeneration and repair in humans. His research includes the translational neuroscience of neural stem cells into patients.[2] Imitola is known for his discoveries on the intrinsic immunology of neural stem cells,[3] the impact of inflammation in the endogenous neural stem cell in multiple sclerosis, and the ethical implications of stem cell tourism in neurological diseases.[4]

Jaime Imitola
Born
Barranquilla, Colombia
NationalityColombian American
CitizenshipUnited States
Known forStem cells and multiple sclerosis research
AwardsJohn N. Whitaker
Scientific career
FieldsStem cells
Neuroscience
Computational biology
Neuroimmunology
Medical genetics
Institutions
Harvard University
Harvard Medical School

Early life and education

Imitola earned his M.D. degree from the University of Cartagena in 1993. He went on to receive postdoctoral training at Harvard University, Imitola completed postdoctoral fellowships at Harvard Medical School in 2005 with Samia J. Khoury in collaboration and guidance from Evan Y. Snyder and Christopher A. Walsh in stem cell biology and neuroimmunology, later that year joined the faculty at Harvard Medical School as an instructor in neurology.

He trained at the Ann Romney Center for Neurologic Diseases at the Brigham and Women's Hospital at Harvard Medical School. Here, he studied the molecular biology of neural stem cells (NSCs) and neuroimmunology. As a faculty at Harvard University, and affiliate faculty of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI), he established novel techniques in imaging to study the immunology of neural stem cells and microglia[5] that lead to the discovery of the mechanisms of migration of Neural stem cells in Stroke and the alteration of neural stem cells self-renewal capacity in models of Multiple sclerosis by microglia activation.[6] Imitola has authored more than 100 publications, abstracts, and book chapters in scholarly journals. His discovery of the molecular mechanisms of neural stem cells to CNS injury have been replicated by additional groups. Imitola is highly cited for his work in neural stem cells migration.[7]

Academic career

The mechanisms of how neural stem cells migrate to injury are critical to understanding repair. The role of the chemokines in the migration of stem cells was demonstrated in 1997 when it was discovered that bone marrow stem cells could migrate to the chemokine SDF-1 alpha.[8] However, the migration of stem cells in the brain to injury was less understood. In 2004, Imitola and his colleagues demonstrated an inflammation-dependent mechanism for the responses of NSCs to CNS injury by astrocytes.[9] They showed that the inflammatory chemokine Stromal cell-derived factor 1 alpha released by astrocytes during stroke was responsible for the directed migration of human and mouse NSCs to areas of injury in mice, creating Injury induced stem cell niches elucidated by reporter stem cells, as proposed by Professor Evan Y. Snyder[10] to denote the regenerative (micro-environments) areas created after CNS damage and the ability to visualize these areas by using stem cells expressing reporter genes (i.e. LacZ).[11]

This discovery paved the way for the study of the responses of endogenous neural stem cell migration in regeneration in other neurological diseases. The work has been extensively cited[12] and reproduced by multiple labs,[13][14] and firmly established chemokines as important modulators of migration of neural stem cells not only in CNS development but also repair.[15]

Imitola has received awards for his research in stem cells including the John N. Whitaker, MD[16] Award for Multiple Sclerosis research [17]

References
  1. "Faculty Directory › UConn Health".
  2. "imitola neural stem cells - PMC - NCBI". www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.
  3. Imitola, Jaime (June 15, 2019). "Regenerative neuroimmunology: The impact of immune and neural stem cell interactions for translation in neurodegeneration and repair". Journal of Neuroimmunology. 331: 1–3. doi:10.1016/j.jneuroim.2019.04.008. PMID 31023492. S2CID 125213447 – via PubMed.
  4. "imitola stem cells tourism - Search Results". PubMed.
  5. Imitola J, Côté D et al, Multimodal coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering microscopy reveals microglia-associated myelin and axonal dysfunction in multiple sclerosis-like lesions in mice.J Biomed Opt. 2011 Feb;16(2):021109
  6. Rasmussen S, Imitola J, Ayuso-Sacido A, Wang Y, Starossom SC, Kivisäkk P, Zhu B, Meyer M, Bronson RT, Garcia-Verdugo JM, Khoury SJ.Reversible neural stem cell niche dysfunction in a model of multiple sclerosis.Ann Neurol. 2011 May;69(5):878-91
  7. "Jaime Imitola, MD. - Google Scholar Citations". scholar.google.co.uk.
  8. Aiuti, A.; Webb, I. J.; Bleul, C.; Springer, T.; Gutierrez-Ramos, J. C. (January 6, 1997). "The chemokine SDF-1 is a chemoattractant for human CD34+ hematopoietic progenitor cells and provides a new mechanism to explain the mobilization of CD34+ progenitors to peripheral blood". The Journal of Experimental Medicine. 185 (1): 111–120. doi:10.1084/jem.185.1.111. PMC 2196104. PMID 8996247.
  9. Imitola J, Raddassi K, Park KI, Mueller FJ, Nieto M, Teng YD, Frenkel D, Li J, Sidman RL, Walsh CA, Snyder EY, Khoury SJ. Directed migration of neural stem cells to sites of CNS injury by the stromal cell-derived factor 1alpha/CXC chemokine receptor 4 pathway.Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2004 Dec 28;101(52):18117-22
  10. Snyder, E. Y.; Deitcher, D. L.; Walsh, C.; Arnold-Aldea, S.; Hartwieg, E. A.; Cepko, C. L. (January 10, 1992). "Multipotent neural cell lines can engraft and participate in development of mouse cerebellum". Cell. 68 (1): 33–51. doi:10.1016/0092-8674(92)90204-p. PMID 1732063. S2CID 44695465 – via PubMed.
  11. Imitola J, Park KI, Teng YD, Nisim S, Lachyankar M, Ourednik J, Mueller FJ, Yiou R, Atala A, Sidman RL, Tuszynski M, Khoury SJ, Snyder EY. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2004 May 29;359(1445):823-37
  12. Imitola, Jaime; Raddassi, Khadir; Park, Kook In; Mueller, Franz-Josef; Nieto, Marta; Teng, Yang D.; Frenkel, Dan; Li, Jianxue; Sidman, Richard L.; Walsh, Christopher A. (June 9, 2004). "Directed migration of neural stem cells to sites of CNS injury by the stromal cell-derived factor 1α/CXC chemokine receptor 4 pathway". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 101 (52): 18117–18122. Bibcode:2004PNAS..10118117I. doi:10.1073/pnas.0408258102. PMC 536055. PMID 15608062 – via Google Scholar.
  13. Tran PB, Banisadr G, Ren D, Chenn A, Miller RJ.Chemokine receptor expression by neural progenitor cells in neurogenic regions of mouse brain.J Comp Neurol. 2007 Feb 20;500(6):1007-33.
  14. Carbajal KS, Schaumburg C, Strieter R, Kane J, Lane TE. Migration of engrafted neural stem cells is mediated by CXCL12 signaling through CXCR4 in a viral model of multiple sclerosis.Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2010 Jun 15;107(24):11068-73
  15. Li M, Hale JS, Rich JN, Ransohoff RM, Lathia JD.Chemokine CXCL12 in neurodegenerative diseases: an SOS signal for stem cell-based repair.Trends Neurosci. 2012 Oct;35(10):619-28. doi: 10.1016/j.tins.2012.06.003
  16. Rosenberg, Roger N. (December 1, 2001). "John N. Whitaker, MD (1940-2001)". Archives of Neurology. 58 (12): 2059. doi:10.1001/archneur.58.12.2059 – via jamanetwork.com.
  17. "Brigham and Women's Hospital - Awards, Honors & Grants". www.brighamandwomens.org. Archived from the original on 2013-09-08.
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