2022 Charles Sorbie Faculty Research Day | Department of Surgery | School of Medicine

The 2022 Faculty Research Day took place virtually on April 8, 2022. The guest speaker was Nader Ghasemlou, an Associate Professor at Queen's University.

He leads the Pain Chronobiology & Neuroimmunology (PCN) Lab, a multi-disciplinary research team studying the contribution of the cellular and molecular immune response to diseases of the nervous system. Research in the group is focused on diseases of the nervous system including inflammatory and neuropathic pain, multiple sclerosis, and spinal cord injury. His team uses a reverse-translational model to study disease, using clinical data to inform our fundamental animal studies, with the ultimate goal of identifying potential new therapeutic targets. Work in the PCN Lab uses a systems approach, including molecular (RNA, DNA, protein), cellular (cell culture, flow cytometry, electrophysiology), and behavioural tools and techniques to understand how the nervous and immune systems communicate to modulate disease outcomes. His group has begun using the body's internal clock, or chronobiological rhythms, to identify new mediators of disease. This research is made possible through multiple collaborations with patient-partners and clinicians, both locally and through national networks, and research laboratories globally. Work in the lab is funded by various sources including CIHR, NSERC, the MS Society of Canada, and the Craig Neilsen Foundation, among others. He sits on the Executive and Scientific Committees of the Canadian Brain Research Strategy, the Canadian Pain Society, the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada, and the CIHR-SPOR Chronic Pain Network. Dr. Ghasemlou completed his Postdoctoral Fellowship as a CIHR Banting Fellow at Harvard Medical School where he studied inflammatory and neuropathic pain in Dr. Clifford Woolf's Neural Plasticity Research Group. He carried out his doctoral studies in Neuroimmunology at McGill University, supported by doctoral fellowships from CIHR and FRQS, studying neuro-immune interactions in the spinal cord causing tissue damage.

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