Investigator: Dr. Monique Stins

Assistant Professor of Neurology

Dr. Monique Stins obtained her Master's in Structural Analysis, Biochemistry and Cell Biology from the University of Utrecht, followed by a PhD in Cell Biology from Leiden University in The Netherlands. In 1990, she came to the United States and spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Medicine at Columbia University under the supervision of Dr. Ira Goldberg. She then moved to the Department of Pediatric Infectious Disease at Children's Hospital of Los Angeles for additional fellowship training in the laboratory of Dr. Kwang Kim. In 2001, Dr. Stins came to Johns Hopkins as faculty, initially to the Division of Infectious Disease in the Department of Pediatrics, and subsequently joined the Department of Neurology.

Dr. Stins’s research focuses on the responses of the blood brain barrier (BBB) to stress, including pathogens such as Plasmodium infected erythrocytes (malaria) or alcohol exposure. Her main interest is to characterize the activated and dysfunctional BBB and how signals originating from an activated and/or dysfunctional BBB lead to neurological dysfunction.

Dr. Stins also collaborates with Dr Joseph Steiner of the Department of Neurology and member of the newly funded JHU NIMH Center for Novel Therapeutics of HIV-associated Cognitive Disorders, headed by Dr. Justin McArthur. Novel neuroprotectants that evolve from Dr. Steiner’s studies will be evaluated for their ability to cross the blood brain barrier in in-vitro and in vivo studies. Novel neuroprotective compounds which possess in vivo efficacy and have proven good pharmacokinetic / toxicologic properties may ultimately be evaluated as adjunctive therapy for HIV patients with cognitive disorders.