Jonathan Fischell Email & Phone Number

After undergrad I moved to Baltimore to complete a master's program in Molecular Medicine at the University of Maryland. I worked in a pre-translational/basics science lab with a PI, Scott Thompson. We studied depression and my project specifically investigated alpha-5 containing GABA receptor inverse agonists as rapidly acting antidepressants. Working in the lab for 1.5 years I learned behavioral techniques and field electrophysiology. I completed a thesis and published a first author paper with my positive results in the Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology. After this I went to the University of Maryland for Medical School. I took 1 year off between first and second year to grow my skills in electrophysiology. During this time, I did the electrophysiology experiments investigating the ketamine metabolite, 2R6R-hydroxnorketamine, and was the first to demonstrate potentiation of Schaffer-Collateral synapses with this compound. The fast acting antidepressant properties of this compound, along with the electrophysiologic results were published in Nature in 2016, entitled NMDAR inhibition-independent antidepressant actions of ketamine metabolites.After medical school I went into Neurology residency, also at the University of Maryland. Going into neurology, I shifted my translational research interests from rapidly acting antidepressants to gene therapy for neurodegenerative disease. I quickly recognized the potential impact of gene therapies on many neurologic disease which currently exist without disease modifying therapy. My passion for gene therapy research grew, I recognized delivery as a major hurdle preventing broad translation of gene therapies for neurodegenerative disease and my investigation into this topic became expansive. In addition to my role as a full time resident, I spent the 2.5 years of residency I wrote and re-wrote a expansive review on this topic with the help of Dr. Paul Fishman. This first author paper was published in Frontier's in Neuroscience in 9/2021.Currently, in addition neurology residency I am working on multiple project in the lab of Dr. Piotr Walczak and Dr. Miraslow Janowski. The main project is evaluating AAV delivery to the brain in mice by intra-arterial injection with intra-arterial mannitol to disrupt the blood brain barrier. I am also working a project to use the same idea in humans to deliver Bevacizumab in a small clinical trial for patients with Glioblastoma.