Journal of Spine

Candace Floyd

Biography

 Dr. Floyd received her Ph.D. from the Medical College of Virginia of Virginia Commonwealth University in 2000.  She then conducted a post-doctoral fellowship (2001-2004) in the Department of Neurological Surgery at the University of California, Davis and became Assistant Professor in the same Department in 2004.  In 2006, she joined the faculty at UAB as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. She is a member of the National Neurotrauma Society, the International Neurotrauma Society, and the Society for Neuroscience.

Research Interest

 Millions of people a year suffer a traumatic brain or spinal cord injury (TBI or SCI) and in the blink of an eye, their lives may be changed forever.  The current clinical repertoire for treating CNS injury is extremely limited.  In fact, there are no pharmacological interventions to treat TBI and only one drug with questionable efficacy for use in SCI.  Most previous research in CNS injury has focused on neuroprotection, and has discounted the role of glial cells in injury pathology.  The central hypothesis of our research is that understanding of the complex interaction of glial and neuronal cells in the pathophysiology of traumatic CNS injury will lead to novel, effective therapeutic interventions.  On-going projects include:

1. Estrogens, phytoestrogens, and selective estrogen receptor modulators (SERMs) as potential protective agents in SCI and TBI
2. Evaluation of fusion proteins for delivery of anti-apoptotic proteins in SCI and TBI
3. Mechanisms of astrocyte damage, dysfunction, and cell death in TBI and SCI
4. Developing clinically relevant, scalable, animal models of blast-induced TBI and multiple-mild TBI
5. Evaluation of chemically functionalized carbon nanotubes as a regenerative substrate after SCI