Juan Lerma Gomez - Biography#

Full CV and publications 2014

Summary of Scientific Achievements

Juan Lerma (JL) initiated his career in 1979 at the "Ramon y Cajal" Hospital in Madrid, studying the neural circuits and cellular activities that process sensory-motor integration during Paradoxical Sleep (REM sleep). After obtaining his Ph.D degree in 1983, he established an independent laboratory in the same department where he contributed to the development of brain microdialysis until he moved (1987) to the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, in New York. In 1990, he returned to Madrid as Group Leader at the Cajal Institute (CSIC) where he continued to make key contributions in the field of glutamate receptors in neuronal physiopathology. In 2004, JL moved with his group to the Instituto de Neurociencias de Alicante, where he was appointed Vicedirector in 2005 and Director in 2007.

Upon returning to Spain, JL’s group has been working on the structure and the function of glutamate receptors, the most important signaling system in the brain, as it mediates more than 90% of the excitatory neurotransmission. To this end, JL implemented molecular and electrophysiological approaches. Through the generation and analyses of chimeric constructions, JL’s group analyzed one important characteristic of neurotransmitter receptors: desensitization (Neuron 1992); defined its structural determinants (Neuron, 1998a) and the allosteric mechanism involved (Neuron, 2001), intrinsic to the NMDA type of glutamate receptors. In the frame of defining the molecular structures mediating neuronal communication, JL was first to describe the existence in central neurons of another type of functional glutamate receptors, the kainate receptor. JL demonstrated that kainate receptor proteins form functional receptor channels in hippocampal neurons (PNAS 1993) and also provided the tool by which these receptors could be further studied, the drug 2-3-benzodiazepine, GYKI 53655, which allowed its pharmacological isolation (Neuron 1995a). Indeed, this finding paved the way for progress in the field. Since then, JL’s and other groups have addressed specific questions on the functional role of these receptors. JL has characterized these receptors in cultured neurons (where they were among the pioneers in applying single-cell RT-PCR; Neuron, 1995b) and in brain slices and described their fundamental role in controlling neuronal tissue excitability and epileptogenesis (Neuron, 1997). Among other achievements, JL has demonstrated that these receptors have a dual mechanism for signaling. In addition to their expected ability to act as ion channels, JL and associates have shown that they trigger a second messenger-mediated cascade, involving a G-protein (Neuron, 1998b; PNAS 2000). This and subsequent work (Neuron, 2003; EMBO J., 2007) put forward the new concept that ion channel-forming receptors are also able to signal through a G-protein, opening new vistas on the mechanisms by which glutamate receptors of the ionotropic type work. Taken together, JL’s contributions have helped to understand why kainate receptor activation is proconvulsive and identified kainate receptors as targets for new treatments of epileptic disease.

Juan Lerma has organized and chaired symposia for the Society for Neuroscience (SfN) and the FENS meetings and gave several plenary lectures in national and international congresses. JL has written a number of reviews in journals such as Neuron, Physiological Reviews, Current Opinion and Nature Reviews as well as in a number of monographic books, including the Encyclopedia of Neurosciences (L. Squire, ed).