Giamal Luheshi
professor
Psychiatry
McGill University
Canada
Biography
Dr Luheshi is a full professor at the department of Psychiatry, McGill University and an associate member of the department of Neurology and Neurosurgery at the same institution. He received his PhD in 1990 from the university of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK where he worked on diabetic neuropathy and neuromuscular transmission. He then joined Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell’s laboratory in the university of Manchester as a post-doctoral fellow investigating the nature of the peripheral immune signal to the brain in response to systemic inflammation. He continued this work following his appointment as lecturer (asst. Professor) in the School of Biological sciences in the same university in 1997, during which time he demonstrated that the appetite suppressing hormone, leptin, shares a number of functional properties with pro-inflammatory cytokines, such as interleukin-6 including action as a neuroimmune mediator. The work on leptin was expanded following relocation of his laboratory to McGill in 2000, and now forms part of a larger project investigating the link between energy status and the immune response using rodent models of diet induced obesity and food restriction. In parallel to this Dr Luheshi’s lab is studying the effects of the maternal immune system activated by pathogenic inflammatory stimuli during critical stages of gestation on the normal development of the fetal brain. This work was based on the rationale that dysegulation of the maternal immune response, known to occur during pregnancy, can result in developmental defects of the fetal brain, leading to brain disorders such as schizophrenia in the adult off-spring. Using this approach the effect of the prenatal insult on the recently described normal physiological function of microglia (pruning) in network formation is being investigated. This represents a very realistic mechanism that could underly a number of neurodevelopmental disorders including Autism spectrum disorders and schizophrenia.
Research Interest
Neuroinflammation and neurodevelopment
Publications
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Dark microglia: A new phenotype predominantly associated with pathological states. Bisht K, Sharma KP, Lecours C, Sánchez MG, El Hajj H, Milior G, Olmos-Alonso A, Gómez-Nicola D, Luheshi G, Vallières L, Branchi I, Maggi L, Limatola C, Butovsky O, Tremblay MÈ.
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Prenatal infection leads to ASD-like behavior and altered synaptic pruning in the mouse offspring. Fernández de CossÃo L, Guzmán A, van der Veldt S, Luheshi GN.
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Plasticity of the epigenome during early-life stress. Burns SB, Szyszkowicz JK, Luheshi GN, Lutz PE, Turecki G.
