Jennifer L. Koehler

This study shows that tofacitinib, a JAK inhibitor, reduces seizures and improves cognition in a mouse model of drug-resistant epilepsy when used as an add-on therapy to carbamazepine.

This study uses Motion Sequencing combined with a novel analysis pipeline to identify repetitive behaviors in epileptic mice and shows that carbamazepine partially rescues these behaviors.

In mice 4 days after kainate-induced status epilepticus, H3K27me3 gains coincide with repression of excitability genes; EZH2 inhibition with UNC1999 lowers seizure threshold acutely and increases chronic seizure frequency.

The paper shows that brief tofacitinib treatment suppresses seizures and reverses cognitive deficits in chronic epilepsy by targeting a resurgent JAK/STAT pathway activation.