Jung Kim, MD

Hippocampal sclerosis (neuronal loss and gliosis) plays a complicated role in epilepsy: hippocampal sclerosis occurs due to epilepsy, but, in turn, the sclerotic hippocampus appears to be responsible for epileptogenesis. We are looking into the role of hippocampal neurons and glial cells in epilepy through neuronal and glial density studies in surgically resected hippocampi from intractable epilepsy patients. My second research interest is the role of calpains in CNS degenerative disorders, epilepsy and AIDS. All three conditions just mentioned are believed to have neuronal damages, at least in part, due to excitotoxicity, which may acitivate calpains, a family of Ca++ dependent proteases. Calpains, once activated, cleave spectrin, generating the spectrin breakdown product (BDP), and involvement of calpains is determined by detecting spectrin BDP in the CNS tissue.