Pharmacologist
Leader, Neuropharmacology/neuroscience
Laboratory
Room F201 and F202
Southern Research
2000 Ninth Avenue South
Birmingham AL-35205
205-581-2269
E-mail: Grimaldi@sri.org
Dr. Grimaldi graduated from medical school magna cum laude from The University of Napoli in Italy, one of the oldest and most prestigious academic institutions in Italy. Successively he specialized in clinical pharmacology and obtained his PhD in neuropharmacology and toxicology from the same University.
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, the International Neurochemistry Society and 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 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.
Dr. Grimaldi holds four secondary appointments. He has been appointed as 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 case analysis study groups. He is also part of the newly constituted 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, post doctoral fellows and faculty members; and organizes biannual conferences on glial biology for scholarly exchange and dissemination of scientific findings.
Dr. Grimaldi 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.
The main focus of the neuropharmacology/neuroscience laboratory is to understand brain cell physiology and how it relates to models of brain disease, and to design possible therapeutic agents that can reverse changes induced by pathologic condition.
On a regular basis, the neuropharmacology/neuroscience lab prepares brain cells, both astrocytes and neurons, which are the primary source 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 will be used to obtain information on the regulation of calcium homeostasis in the brain.
The neuropharmacology lab is equipped with a state-of-the-art high-speed, high-spatial resolution imaging system which allows performing experiments to monitor calcium concentration inside single brain cells in culture using ratiometric and non ratiometric fluorescent calcium probes. 
The laboratory will be investigating 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 this lab is to identify it, to design novel drugs that can modulate it and also investigate whether or not this channel could be involved in pathological conditions.
A second area of interest of the neuropharmacology lab 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 will be investigated. A unique pharmacological approach will be used to design and test possible therapeutic agents. Finally, in collaboration with other scientist at Southern Research, the effect of thousands of compounds will be evaluated via high-throughput and high-content screening. The compounds identified will be returned to the lab in order to characterize their mechanism of action and begin animal testing to determine pharmacokinetic properties and efficacy.
The neuropharmacology lab will also conduct neurooncology research. The laboratory is interested 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. The laboratory will address in further details, the meaning of such differences in terms of glial cells proliferation and transformation. Also, the effect of agents able to affect the involved system will be evaluated on transformation and proliferation of glial cells. We will attempt to adopt these models to high-throughput screening in order to evaluate a possible role as antiproliferating agents of the thousands of compounds present in our libraries.