Dr. Eroboghene Ubogu is a tenured Professor of Neurology and Neurobiology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) and the director of the division of Neuromuscular Disease since September 2013. He is originally from Nigeria and went to medical school at the Imperial College School of Medicine, University of London, London, United Kingdom, graduating in 1998. His interest in neurology and immunology developed during his medical school education. He was particularly inspired by an outbreak of E. coli gastroenteritis that occurred from eating contaminated hamburgers which caused several cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome in the United Kingdom in the mid-1990s. He moved to the United States for postgraduate medical education, completing an internship in General Internal Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Cleveland, Ohio in 2000, and an adult neurology residency at the University Hospitals-Case Medical Center, Cleveland, Ohio in 2003, where he served as Chief Resident during his final year. Dr. Ubogu moved to Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, Georgia where he completed his fellowship training in Clinical Neurophysiology/ Neuromuscular Disorders in 2004.
While an Assistant Professor at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, he underwent a translational basic science neuroimmunology postdoctoral research fellowship at the Lerner Research Institute, Cleveland Clinic Foundation for over 2 years, followed by the establishment of his independent research laboratory at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas in 2007. His research lab was the first in the world to characterize the in vitro human blood-nerve barrier (BNB), formed by specialized microvascular endothelial cells that reside within the innermost compartment of peripheral nerves called the endoneurium. He rose to the rank of Associate Professor with tenure there in 2012 and joined the faculty at UAB in 2013 as a Tenured Professor of Neurology, and Director of the Division of Neuromuscular Disease in the Department of Neurology. He also directs the Neuromuscular Immunopathology Research Laboratory (NIRL), a National Institutes of Health-funded research laboratory dedicated to understanding the vascular biology of the BNB and hematogenous leukocyte trafficking into peripheral nerves in health and disease. The NIRL published the first comprehensive normal human BNB transcriptome using purified passaged primary human endoneurial endothelial cells and laser capture microdissected endoneurial microvessels from histologically normal cryopreserved adult sural nerve biopsies in 2017.
Dr. Ubogu has numerous academic and professional awards, over 120 peer-reviewed publications, written/edited 2 books, written over 50 book chapters and given over 70 scientific presentations and invited lectures. He is committed to medical student, neurology resident and neuromuscular medicine post-graduate education and has directly mentored over 50 individuals in clinical medicine or scientific research. His research lab has been continuously funded through intramural or extramural funds since 2007, including the National Institutes of Health since 2011 and he currently serves as an international scientific journal and research grant reviewer. Dr. Ubogu is also board-certified in Neurology, Clinical Neurophysiology, Electrodiagnostic Medicine, Neuromuscular Medicine and Clinical Neuromuscular Pathology
The NIRL is performing cutting-edge research using in situ, in vitro and in vivo model systems to better understand immune-mediated peripheral nervous system disorders so as to help develop more specific and effective treatments, as well as fundamentally understand the mammalian BNB in health and pathologic states such as peripheral nerve inflammation and traumatic nerve injury with direct relevance to chronic neuropathic pain.
