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Tomás R. Guilarte, PhD, has received the 2022 SOT Translational Impact Award in recognition of his translational work involving the role of the translocator protein 18 kDa (TSPO) as a biomarker of neuroinflammation and brain injury caused by neurotoxicants and for his study of neurodegenerative disorders.

Dr. Guilarte received his PhD in environmental health sciences from the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Heath in 1980, after which he began a career in academia as a Professor at Johns Hopkins University and Columbia University. At Columbia University, he was the inaugural Leon Hess Endowed Chair and Professor in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the Mailman School of Public Health. He currently serves as Dean of the Robert Stempel College of Public Health & Social Work at Florida International University, where he also is a Professor and Director of the Brain, Behavior, and the Environment Emerging Preeminent Program.

Dr. Guilarte’s research explores the impact of environmental pollutants on neurodevelopmental disorders and neurodegenerative diseases. His work uses behavioral, cellular, and molecular approaches ranging from studies using primary culture of brain cells to the application of brain imaging technologies. He has made seminal discoveries in the molecular and cellular mechanism(s) of heavy metal–induced neurological dysfunction, focusing primarily on lead and manganese. His laboratory has made groundbreaking findings on the molecular and cellular mechanisms of lead intoxication on the developing brain mediated via inhibition of the NMDA receptor, an excitatory amino acid receptor subtype. This led to a new understanding of how childhood lead exposure impairs synaptic plasticity in the form of long-term potentiation and cognitive function.

In addition, Dr. Guilarte’s laboratory pioneered the validation and application of a biomarker of brain injury and neuroinflammation called TSPO. Using many animal models of neurological disease, Dr. Guilarte showed that TSPO was an early biomarker of neuroinflammation and neurodegeneration that was upregulated well before any manifestation of behavioral dysfunction. His work has demonstrated the utility of TSPO as an imaging biomarker of neurotoxicity in the brain, including through studies with exposures to trimethyltin, domoic acid, MPTP, and others.

After conducting studies in nonhuman primates that showed that TSPO was elevated in the frontal cortex gray and white matter of macaques infected with HIV encephalitis, Dr. Guilarte, with colleagues at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, began research with TSPO as a biomarker of neuroinflammation in National Football League players using Positron Emission Tomography. This worked showed an early and lasting elevation in neuroinflammation as measured by TSPO. In terms of mechanism(s) research on the use of TSPO, his research showed that TSPO may be linked to neuroinflammation through an association with NADPH oxidase in microglia.

Dr. Guilarte is a highly decorated scientist. He was inducted into the prestigious Johns Hopkins University Society of Scholars in 2018 and into the Academy of Science, Engineering, and Medicine of Florida in 2020. He also was selected by NBC News as a Top 20 Latino Making a Difference in the United States in 2019 and was honored by Congresswoman Debbie Mucarsell-Powell of Florida’s 26th district as a Hispanic leading educator making a difference. In addition, Dr. Guilarte received the 2018 SOT Hispanic Organization of Toxicologists Distinguished Toxicologist Award and the 2020 SOT Metals Specialty Section Career Achievement Award, as well as a 2020 Florida International University Top Scholar Award.

Dr. Guilarte is extremely active in the larger scientific community. He joined SOT in 1995 and is a Past President of the SOT Neurotoxicology Specialty Section. He also is a longtime member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Society for Neuroscience, and the International Neurotoxicology Association. He has served as a peer reviewer for more than 70 scientific journals and has published more than 50 peer-reviewed articles in the last 10 years alone, and his work has received nearly 13,000 citations.

2022 SOT Translational Impact Award Lecture: Imaging Neuroinflammation with TSPO: From Mice to Men

Tuesday, March 29, 3:00 PM–4:00 PM
San Diego Convention Center, Ballroom 6A

Dr. Guilarte will deliver the 2022 SOT Translational Impact Award Lecture during the SOT Annual Meeting and ToxExpo. The lecture abstract is as follows:

Translocator protein 18 kDa (TSPO) is a glia (microglia and astrocytes) stress response protein that has been rigorously validated as a biomarker of neuroinflammation to assess diverse central nervous system pathologies in preclinical and clinical studies. Today, neuroinflammation in the living brain can be visualized and studied using TSPO-Positron Emission Tomography (PET) imaging. Under normal physiological conditions, TSPO levels are low in the brain neuropil, but they markedly increase at primary and secondary sites of brain injury and inflammation, making TSPO uniquely suited for assessing the brain cells that mount an inflammatory response, including the infiltration of peripheral immune cells. TSPO is an early biomarker of neuroinflammation that can be used to track disease progression and to assess the effectiveness of therapeutic strategies. As a result of these characteristics, TSPO-PET is used clinically in major research centers around the world to assess neuroinflammation in neurodegenerative, neurological, and mental disorders and to examine the neurotoxic potential of environmental toxins. The recent expansion of this approach also has been recognized in cancer, cardiovascular disease, and other human conditions that comprise an inflammatory response. Furthermore, TSPO is a druggable target with therapeutic implications in mitigating neuroinflammation. The lecture will provide a historical perspective from the beginning to the current state-of-the-science.