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Inicio / BioPonentes / bio / William A. Banks

William A. Banks

William A. Banks, M.D., F.A.C.E.
Professor Associate Chief of Staff - Research & Development, Puget Sound VA
Professor, Division of Gerontology & Geriatric Medicine. Department of Internal Medicine, University of Washington. Adjunct Professor, Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Science. Editor-in Chief, Current Pharmaceutical Design

Ex-President of PyscoNeuroInmunology Research Society, Dr. William A. Banks was recently Professor at Saint Louis University in the departments of Internal Medicine and Pharmacological and Physiological Sciences. Since 2010 he is a Professor in the Division of Gerontology and Geriatric Medicine, Dept of Internal Medicine, University of Washington School of Medicine. Seattle. He is Editor-in-Chief of Current Pharmaceutical Design. He received his MD from University of MO-Columbia in 1979 and did training at Tulane University. He is author of over 350 non-abstract publications.

His research interests for 30 years have been the investigation of the mechanisms by which the brain and body communicate through blood-borne mechanisms and how such knowledge can be used to treat human diseases. Understanding these mechanisms has necessitated an in-depth study of the blood-brain barrier (BBB). The work has contributed to modern concepts of the BBB, including its ability to act more as a regulatory interface between the blood and brain than as an absolute barrier. He has strong interests in understanding how the BBB responds to physiological changes and reacts to, mediates, and even causes disease states. In this regard, he has a long standing interest in questions related to the mechanisms by which pathogens interact with and cross the BBB. Current areas of interest include blood-brain barrier, peptides, cytokines, obesity, drug delivery, Alzheimer’s disease, LRP-1, P-gp, diabetes and the CNS, neuroAIDS, neuroinflammation, neuroimmunology, aging, and insulin.

Research Interest: The major focus of the Banks laboratory is the study of how the brain and body communicate with one another through the transfer of informational molecules across the blood-brain barrier (BBB). The BBB exists because the capillary bed of the central nervous system is modified to prevent the unrestricted leakage of proteins from blood into the brain. The Banks laboratory has shown that many regulatory proteins and peptides, which are some of the most potent information-conveying molecules in the body, can cross the BBB. This passage is often highly regulated and affected by disease states. As such, the lab is active in several areas. Work with how leptin and other feeding hormones cross the BBB gives insight into obesity and body weight control. Work with cytokine transport across the BBB helps to understand how the immune system and brain speak to one another under normal conditions and other pathological conditions such as sepsis, Alzheimer's disease, and spinal cord injury. Work on alcohol addition has show that the BBB helps to regulate brain levels of methionine enkephalin, an opiate peptide that influenes voluntary alcohol drinking and seizure activity. Work with HIV-1 shows it can cross the BBB as free virus to directly infect the brain and our current work is investigating how prions enter the brain. We also have several projects related to drug delivery into brain, including the delivery of antisense for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease, the delivery of enzymes for the treatment of mucopolysaccharidoses, and the modification of peptides and proteins with esters and pluronics as a more universal delivery mechanism.
 
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