Eugene Ponomarev

The long-term goal of my research program is to delineate the immunological aspects of the regulation of neuroinflammation and stimulation of repair in the central nervous system (CNS). In general, CNS inflammatory response can be viewed as a regulated cascade of events, with certain players arriving at the stage to act at a certain time. All inflammatory events begin with a trigger: in some cases, this can be identified as a traumatic brain injury (TBI), but for most neuroinflammatory and neurodegenerative diseases, such as multiple sclerosis or Alzheimer’s disease, the ultimate etiology is unknown. After the trigger event, initial damage to neuronal tissue occurs, followed by the reaction of certain cell types within a certain time frame. Thus, platelets respond to neurovascular damage within seconds, tissue-resident macrophages (e.g., microglia) within minutes, peripheral macrophages within hours, and T and B cells within days. The main direction in my laboratory is to find new mediators and understand the mechanisms of the initiation and propagation of neuroinflammation, and find ways to treat various neurologic disorders. This direction is based on our highly original discoveries that major brain glycolipids located around the blood-brain barrier within lipid rafts of astrocytes and post-synaptic neurons (neuronal lipid rafts, NLR) specifically activate platelets and B1a B cells. Other specific lipids were found to be located on HDLs and skew microglia and macrophages toward a regenerative M2-like phenotype of innate immune cells called macrophages.

Prof. Eugene Ponomarev received his B.S. degree in Natural Sciences, M.S. degree in Molecular Biology at the Faculty of Chemical and Physical Biology, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, and then a Ph.D. degree in Immunology from the Russian Academy of Sciences. Later, he moved to the USA and accomplished his postdoctoral training in neurology and immunology at the Blood Centre of Wisconsin (Medical College of Wisconsin) and Harvard Medical School (Harvard University and Brigham and Women's Hospital). In the USA, Dr. Ponomarev was later appointed as an Assistant Professor in Neurology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School. In 2013, Eugene Ponomarev moved to Hong Kong SAR of China, where he held the position of Assistant Professor at the School of Biomedical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Currently, Eugene Ponomarev holds an Associate Professor position at the Department of Biosciences and Bioinformatics, XJTLU, and honorary Adjunct Professor positions at Nazarbayev University, Kazakhstan, and City University of Hong Kong.  Ponomarev’s laboratory has international recognition in the field of neuroinflammation and neurodegeneration. He published more than 50 peer-reviewed scientific articles in top international academic journals, such as Nature Medicine, Journal of Immunology, Journal of Neuroscience, etc. Prof. Ponomarev has 30 years of research and 15 years of teaching experience in academia, working across the globe.

Prof. Ponomarev currently teaches BIO113 Molecular Biology Techniques and BIO210 Biotechnology courses. He will be involved in the future in teaching anatomy and physiology for a new program in Biomedical Sciences. Prof. Ponomarev has extensive experience not only in teaching but also in research related to these disciplines, and he will be sharing his experience during his lectures, giving students an idea about knowledge application. As part of his teaching philosophy, Professor Ponomarev believes that students need a solid basis of fundamental knowledge that enables them to understand the cause-and-effect connections of observed phenomena in biology, biomedicine, and interdisciplinary research.