Maurizio Grimaldi, M.D., Ph.D.

Pharmacologist
Leader, Neuropharmacology/Neuroscience Laboratory
2000 Ninth Avenue South
Birmingham, AL 35205
Phone: 205-581-2269
E-mail: Grimaldi@southernresearch.org

Biography

Dr. Grimaldi received his medical degree with the distinction of magna cum laude from The University of Napoli, one of the oldest and most prestigious academic institutions in Italy. Subsequently, he specialized in clinical pharmacology and obtained his Ph.D. in neuropharmacology and toxicology, also from The University of Napoli in Italy.

Dr. Grimaldi currently directs the Neuropharmacology Laboratory at Southern Research, where he conducts leading-edge research in brain physiology and novel treatment agents for CNS diseases, such as Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative disorders, and brain tumors. Dr. Grimaldi also directs the commercial activities for the Laboratory, including low-throughput screening. He is co-investigator for the NIH NINDS High-Throughput Drug Screening Facility for Neurodegenerative Disease. In this capacity, he supervises assay transfer from submitting investigators to the high-throughput screening facility.

Previously during his scientific career, Dr. Grimaldi conducted research at the National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), the National Institute for Child and Human Development (NICHD), and the National Institute for Mental Health (NIMH) at the National Institutes for Health (NIH) in Bethesda, MD. From 2000 to 2004, he was an assistant professor of neurology in the Department of Neurology, Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences in Bethesda. He also consulted for drug companies and the National Institute for Deafness and Communicative Disorders (NIDCD).

Dr. Grimaldi has held fellowships from the Italian Red Cross, the Italian Association for Cancer Research, and the Italian Ministry of Scientific Research. He was a visiting fellow in the Department of Human Metabolism and Clinical Biochemistry at The University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom and at the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences in North Carolina. He is a member of the Society for Neuroscience and the International Neurochemistry Society. He also serves as a reviewer for the Journal of Neuroscience, the Journal of Neurochemistry, Glia, the International Journal of Cell Biology, and Biochemistry and Neuroscience letters.

Dr. Grimaldi has authored and co-authored more than 70 scientific publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals. He has also received two patents, one for a diagnostic test for Alzheimer's disease and the other for an agent extracted from cannabis sativa that may protect brain cells exposed to insults. Two additional patents on neuroprotective agents are pending. He holds four secondary appointments. Dr. Grimaldi has been appointed Adjunct Associate Professor in the Pharmacology and Toxicology Department and the Neurobiology Department in The University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine.

He teaches formal courses in pharmacotherapy and leads cases analysis study groups. He is also part of the Center of Glial Biology in Medicine and of the Comprehensive Neuroscience Center. In this capacity, he fosters communication and scientific exchange between the scientists involved in glial biology and neuroscience research; provides training to students, postdoctoral fellows and faculty members; and organizes biannual conferences on glial biology for scholarly exchange and dissemination of scientific findings.

Research Focus: Neuroprotective Agents and Antiglioma Agents

The overall focus of Dr. Grimaldi's research is to understand brain cell physiology and how it relates to models of brain disease for the purpose of designing potential therapeutic agents that can reverse changes induced by specific pathologic conditions. On a regular basis, the neuropharmacology/neuroscience laboratory prepares brain cells, including astrocytes and neurons, which are the primary sources of data. The laboratory also maintains and stores several cell lines of glial, neuronal, and muscular origin, both animal and human, to validate data obtained in primary cells. This repertoire of cells is used to achieve the objectives stated above.

The neuropharmacology lab is equipped with a state-of-the-art high-speed, high-resolution imaging system that allows performing experiments to execute live monitoring of fluorescent dyes inside single brain cells in culture using ratiometric and non-ratiometric florescent probes. The laboratory investigates the properties of the refilling of intracellular calcium stores in terms of functioning, macromolecular organization, and regulation. Also, the ion channel that is involved in the entry of calcium from the extracellular space upon depletion of the intracellular calcium stores is not yet identified and characterized. One of the main goals of Dr. Grimaldi's lab is to identify the ion channel, to design novel drugs that can modulate it, and to determine if this channel could be involved in pathological conditions.

A primary focus of Dr. Grimaldi's research is the identification of novel therapeutic agents with neuroprotective activity. Using in vitro models of neurodegenerative disorders, the signal transduction chain that is involved in neuronal cell death is investigated. A unique pharmacological approach is used to design and test possible therapeutic agents. In collaboration with other scientists at Southern Research, the effects of thousands of compounds are evaluated using high-throughput and high-content screening. The compounds identified are returned to the lab in order to characterize their mechanism of action and begin animal testing to determine pharmacokinetic properties and efficacy.

Dr. Grimaldi is also engaged in neurooncology research with a specific interest in the mechanisms of transformation of glial cells. In particular, significant differences in calcium homeostasis between normal astrocytes and cancerous glial cells have been identified. Dr. Grimaldi's laboratory investigates the meaning of such differences in terms of glial cells' proliferation and transformation. Also, the effects of agents able to affect the involved system are evaluated on transformation and proliferation of glial cells. Dr. Grimaldi attempts to adopt these models to high-throughput screening in order to evaluate a possible role as antiproliferating agents, among the thousands of compounds present in the Southern Research compound library.

Publications