Alejandro Mayer, Ph.D.

Project I:

Marine pharmaceuticals: marine natural products as pharmacological agents for the modulation of inflammatory and neurotoxic mediators generated by activated microglia Neuroinflammatory conditions are complex and poorly understood disease processes which are hypothesized to involve microglia or brain macrophages. When microglia become activated they release cytotoxic substances (reactive oxygen intermediates, eicosanoids, cytokines and metalloproteinases) which are cytotoxic to brain cells. Microglia are believed to be involved in human brain disorders, such as postischemic brain injury, HIV encephalopathy, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease and multiple sclerosis. Present therapies of these inflammatory conditions are based on steroids and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory therapies which are associated with a high incidence of unsatisfactory toxicity and poor efficacy. Marine anti-inflammatory natural products may constitute a novel source of lead compounds to enable the development of a new generation of drugs for the clinical management of neurological diseases. The Mayer lab which has been studying marine natural products at CCOM and CGS and has become a contributor to the discovery of novel marine antineuroinflammatory compounds, in particular the first two patents assigned to Midwestern University (US patents # 6,3887,916 and # 6,602,881) in 2002 and 2003, respectively. Dr. Mayer has created a marine pharmaceutical's website (https://www.marinepharmacology.org/) which is maintained with the assistance of CCP and CCOM students, as well as several distinguished scientific advisors, and is currently # 1 in Google. The website has been visited over 18,0000 times since its redesign and launch in April 2021.. Dr. Mayer served as the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Marine Drugs from January 2014 till July 2018.



Project II:

Marine toxicology : immunotoxicology of marine and freshwater-derived cyanobacterial lipopolysaccharides. Cyanobacteria or blue-green algae, are photosynthetic prokaryotes that represent one of the oldest life forms and are a rich source of natural products with unique pharmacological and toxicological properties, which possess neuroprotective, cytotoxic, antibacterial, antifungal, antiviral and anti-inflammatory properties. Cyanobacterial LPS differs from Gram-negative bacteria both chemically and biologically. The Mayer lab has been studying the immunotoxicology of cyanobacterial lipopolysaccharides since 2011 and has shown that the cyanobacterial LPS's elicit release of superoxide anion, thromboxane B2, cytokines, chemokines, and matrix metalloproteinase-9 by rat microglia in vitro.