Biography: At present,  Gunnar is the executive director of Research and a member of the Board of Directors at Simmaron Research, a non-profit organization based in Incline Village, Nevada, which works to advance translational science in treating neuroimmune diseases like CFS/ME. Since 2012, Gunnar is a core member of Simmaron's clinical research. In 2012, Gottschalk became the Clinical Coordinator for years I and II of the CDC Multi-site Clinical Assessment of CFS. The project's aim was to characterize patients with CFS or myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) in the clinical practices of clinicians with expertise in CFS/ME.  Carl Gunnar Gottschalk completed his BS in biology at Sierra Nevada College and MS in Biotechnology at Rush University Medical Center. He received his Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Rush University Medical Center.

Research Interest: ME/CFS is a highly heterogeneous disease in terms of its etiological factors, clinical manifestations, and course.  Factors such as the patient’s history, disease onset, duration of the disease, comorbidities, and age contribute to the disease pathogenesis. My aim is to identify a clinical biomarker (s) that can effectively correlate the metabolic impairments in these patients with their clinical symptoms.  Identification, characterization, and validation of biomarkers such as cytokines, chemokines, auto-antibodies, and small molecular metabolites are my primary research interest. I employ an array-based approach for high-throughput screening of hundreds of these molecular factors followed by ELISA-based validation of a specific target. My primary resource is Dr. Peterson’s large biobank of serum, plasma, and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) of ME/CFS patients.

Publications:

1. Gottschalk, C. G., Jana, M., Roy, A., Patel, D. R., and Pahan, K. (2021) Gemfibrozil Protects Dopaminergic Neurons in a Mouse Model of Parkinson's Disease via PPARα-Dependent Astrocytic GDNF Pathway. The Journal of neuroscience 41, 2287-2300\ 2021.

2. Gottschalk, C. G., Roy, A., Jana, M., Kundu, M., and Pahan, K. (2019) Activation of Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor-α Increases the Expression of Nuclear Receptor Related 1 Protein (Nurr1) in Dopaminergic Neurons. Mol Neurobiol 56, 7872-7887.

3. Mandarano, A. H., Maya, J., Giloteaux, L., Peterson, D. L., Maynard, M., Gottschalk, C. G., and Hanson, M. R. (2020) Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome patients exhibit altered T cell metabolism and cytokine associations. J Clin Invest 130, 1491-1505

4. Hornig, M., Montoya, J. G., Klimas, N. G., Levine, S., Felsenstein, D., Bateman, L., Peterson, D. L., Gottschalk, C. G., Schultz, A. F., Che, X., Eddy, M. L., Komaroff, A. L., and Lipkin, W. I. (2015) Distinct plasma immune signatures in ME/CFS are present early in the course of illness. Science advances 1.

5. Gottschalk, G., Keating, J., Kesler, K., Knox, K., and Roy, A. (2020) Intranasal Administration of ACIS KEPTIDE™ Prevents SARS-CoV2-Induced Acute Toxicity in K18-hACE2 Humanized Mouse Model of COVID-19: A Mechanistic Insight for the Prophylactic Role of KEPTIDE™ in COVID-19.BioRxiv 2020

6. Gottschalk, G., Keating, J., Kessler, K., Luan, C., Knox, K., and Roy, A. (2020) ACIS, A Novel KepTide™, Binds to ACE-2 Receptor and Inhibits the Infection of SARS-CoV2 Virus in vitro in Primate Kidney Cells: Therapeutic Implications for COVID-19. BioRxiv 2020

7. Gottschalk, G., Knox, K., and Roy, A. (2021) ACE2: At the crossroad of COVID-19 and lung cancer. Gene Rep 23, 101077

8. Unger, E. R., Lin, J. S., Tian, H., Natelson, B. H., Lange, G., Vu, D., Blate, M., Klimas, N. G., Balbin, E. G., Bateman, L., Allen, A., Lapp, C. W., Springs, W., Kogelnik, A. M., Phan, C. C., Danver, J., Podell, R. N., Fitzpatrick, T., Peterson, D. L., Gottschalk, C. G., and Rajeevan, M. S. (2017) Multi-Site Clinical Assessment of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (MCAM): Design and Implementation of a Prospective/Retrospective Rolling Cohort Study. American journal of epidemiology 185, 617-626.

Honors and Award: Patent: Peptides for Covid-19 prevention and treatment (#11,078,242) 2020