My Research

Sometimes I get asked, “What is your research project about?”

My work sometimes is hard to explain in plain words since I work on a very specific area of research. However I’d like to give an overview of the stuff I do research on.
My main interest is neurosciences and molecular pharmacology. At the moment I am doing research on new treatments for ischemia–reperfusion injury in the brain, caused by stroke or hemorrhage. All my research project is being done at the National Institute of Neurology and Neurosurgery of Mexico.

So, what is this all about?

Well, during stroke, some areas of the brain stop receiving oxygen from the circulation, since the blood flow is stopped. These areas in the brain start compensatory mechanisms, which allow them to survive and at the same time the body tries to restore blood flow so that the functions are restored as soon as possible.
The lack of oxygen is called ischemia and as the cells in the brain try to survive they activate several biochemical mechanisms, one of which activates an enzyme called Inducible Nitric Oxide Synthase (iNOS). This enzyme produces nitric oxide; a free radical that has several functions in the body, for example, in the blood vessels nitric oxide induces vasorelaxation, decreasing blood pressure. In the brain nitric oxide production modulates transmission of information between neurons without the need for a synapse between them. Normally nitric oxide is produced by other forms of Nitric Oxide Synthases located in brain cells (nNOS) and endothelial cells in blood vessels (eNOS); so why is the iNOS different? iNOS is only activated during inflammation or ischemia, it produces way more nitric oxide than the eNOS and nNOS. In principle this extra production of nitric oxide should be helpful to keep brain cells affected by stroke from dying, however, this excess nitric oxide can start activation of other biochemical pathways that induce cell death.

When a stroke patient arrives at the hospital at the emergency room, they try to restore blood flow to the brain (reperfusion), which will prevent the patient from dying; as the blood flow is restored, oxygen from the blood starts to permeate in the affected tissues which is a good thing, but the oxygen combines with the excess nitric oxide and forms Peroxynitrite, a very toxic free radical, that causes cell death which worsens the already critical damage originated by stroke.

What we try to do in our lab, is to find medicines that can inhibit the iNOS function, to decrease the excessive production of nitric oxide and in turn prevent the formation of peroxynitrite during reperfusion therefore decreasing the amount of damage in the brain.

What could result from this area of research?
Most stroke patients present serious neurological problems after recovery, due to damaged cells resulting from ischemia–reperfusion, if our approach is successful, it could reduce this damage, and minimize or eliminate some of these neurological problems, which in turn would give the patient a better quality of life.

This is a very brief summary of what I do. I am very happy to answer any questions that you might have.

Thank you for reading!