Jonathan Kipnis

Dr. Jonathan (Jony) Kipnis is BJC Investigator, Alan A. and Edith L. Wolff Distinguished Professor of Pathology and Immunology and Professor of Neurology, Neuroscience, and Neurosurgery at Washington University in St. Louis, School of Medicine. He is also the inaugural Director of Brain immunology and Glia (BIG) Center at Washington University. Jony graduated from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, where he was Sir Charles Clore Scholar and a recipient of distinguished prize for scientific achievements awarded by the Israeli Parliament, The Knesset.

The Kipnis lab is dedicated to unraveling the intricate interactions between the immune system and the central nervous system (CNS). It explores the cellular and molecular mechanisms that underpin these interactions across a spectrum of conditions, including neurodegenerative, neurodevelopmental, and mental disorders, as well as in physiological states like healthy aging.

Dr. Kipnis and his colleagues discovered that brain function is partly reliant on the integrity and functionality of the immune system, with immune molecules (cytokines) playing neuromodulatory roles. The fascination with immunity and its role in neurophysiology is what brought the lab to a breakthrough discovery of meningeal lymphatic vessels that drain the CNS into the peripheral lymph nodes and thus serve as a physical connection between the brain and the immune system.

This finding challenged the prevailing mechanisms underlying CNS “immune privilege” and

opened new avenues to mechanistically study the nature of neuroimmune interactions under physiological and pathological conditions. The implications of this work are broad and range from autism to Alzheimer’s disease through neuroinflammatory conditions, such as Multiple Sclerosis.

Dr. Kipnis is a member of National Academy of Medicine and among other awards, he is a recipient NIH Director’s Pioneer award for 2018 to explore in more depth neuro-immune interactions in healthy and diseased brain.