John Clegg
University of Oklahoma, OK·Biomedical Engineering
People recovering from traumatic injury, autoimmune disease, viral infection or long exposure to toxins often suffer acute brain damage, sometimes felt as "brain fog." Two kinds of immune cells are known to drive it. One kind is white blood cells, called neutrophils and monocytes, that move from the bloodstream into brain tissue.
- Fields
Biomedical Engineering
Microbiology & Immunology
Neuroscience
- Topics
neuroinflammation
brain injury
microglia
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2028
What they work on
- Test whether activating circulating monocytes and neutrophils, using macrophage-targeted nanogels carrying interferon gamma or interleukin 10, drives their infiltration into the brain in healthy mice and in mouse models of inflammatory disease.
- Implant classically or alternatively polarized macrophages, meaning inflammatory or anti-inflammatory types, into mouse brain within an injectable hydrogel to measure how they activate resident microglia and cause functional and anatomical deficits.
- Evaluate local hydrogel delivery of anti-inflammatory cytokines and macrophages into the brain as a preventive treatment against inflammatory brain damage caused by an LPS challenge in mice.
More about the research
The other is microglia, the brain's own resident immune cells, which can stay chronically activated. It remains unclear how much damage each group causes, and that gap makes it hard to design targeted treatments. This project uses two drug delivery materials the team invented to switch on immune cells in one place at a time and see what follows.
Why it matters
Brain damage from inflammation follows injuries, autoimmune disease and severe viral infections, yet few targeted treatments exist. Sorting out whether blood-borne immune cells or the brain's own microglia cause most of the harm could point to which cells new drugs should target. The nanogel and hydrogel delivery systems could also become the basis for anti-inflammatory therapies that protect the brain.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Yamin Li
Upstate Medical University, NY·Pharmacology
Expand the chemical diversity of sulfonium lipids — carriers that use a charged sulfur group instead of the usual amine — by adding new head, linker and tail building blocks, and relate these structures to self-assembly, mRNA delivery and biocompatibility.
Yasuhiro Suzuki
University of Kentucky, KY·Microbiology & Immunology
Test whether interferon-gamma (IFN-γ) made by microglia, the brain's resident immune cells, recruits monocytes, NK cells and ILC1 cells and activates their IFN-γ production to limit Toxoplasma growth, using mice lacking IFN-γ only in microglia.
Katrin I. Andreasson
Stanford University, CA·Neuroscience
Test whether reprogramming energy metabolism in aging microglia and blood macrophages, by blocking inflammatory PGE2 signaling, can prevent or reverse cognitive decline in aging and Alzheimer's model mice.
The school
University of Oklahoma: 11 labs on PI Pages, $474M a year on research, 225 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
A start for your email. Fill in the brackets.