RESEARCH LECTURER OF THE YEAR
J. Marc Simard, MD, PhD

Future stroke patients will be better off, thanks to J. Marc Simard and his colleagues—the research team at the School of Medicine (SOM) that discovered a new ion channel.

Using the patch clamp, an exquisitely sensitive method for testing and recording cellular electrical currents, Simard, a professor of neurosurgery and associate professor of pathology and physiology in the SOM, studies the regulation of ion
channels in vascular cells of the brain and spinal cord. Properly functioning blood vessels and capillaries are critically important for the life and death of neurons.

Simard's Founders Week Faculty Research Lecture, "Sweet Life—New Role for Sulfonylurea Receptor 1," highlights his research team's discovery of a novel ion channel and its role in stroke and spinal cord injury treatment. The lecture also addresses the channel’s relationship to certain diabetes drugs and their unexpected impact on stroke and spinal cord injury in humans and animal models.

Simard, who is also chief of neurological surgery at the Baltimore Veterans Affairs Medical Center, has published more than 85 articles in outstanding research journals and is a reviewer for several, including Neurosurgery, Circulation Research, Cancer, and The Lancet.