Project Title: Investigating Homeostatic Plasticity in Alzheimer’s Disease
Supervisor: Dr Samuel Barnes
Location: Burlington Danes Building, Hammersmith Hospital Campus
About Me
I am an MRC funded PhD student and international graduate of neuroscience from Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen who is interested in developing and implementing optogenetic live-cell imaging strategies to unravel neuronal dynamics in health and disease. The versatility of these techniques makes them the ideal tools to bridge the gap in understanding between neuronal communication and neurodegeneration. The precise pathological mechanisms through which Alzheimer’s disease influences neuronal activity are still largely unknown, and less still is known about the effect of this perturbed neuronal activity on disease progression in the early phases of Alzheimer’s disease. My project will investigate neuronal firing homeostasis and synaptic plasticity in Alzheimer’s disease, aiming to identify deficits in these processes which we hypothesize function as early correlates of cognitive impairment in Alzheimer’s disease.
I am also supporting early career researchers in the Department of Brain Sciences as an ECR representative.
Qualifications
- BSc (Honours) – Biochemistry, Newcastle University
- MSc – Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen
Publications
Doostdar N, Airey J, Radulescu CI, Melgosa-Ecenarro L, Zabouri N, Pavlidi P, Kopanitsa M, Saito T, Saido T, Barnes SJ. Multi-scale network imaging in a mouse model of amyloidosis. Cell Calcium. 2021 May;95:102365. doi: 10.1016/j.ceca.2021.102365. Epub 2021 Feb 11. PMID: 33610083.
Contact Details
Email: joe.sheppard@imperial.ac.uk
LinkedIn: joe-airey-527482113/
How temperature and circadian rhythms intersect to regulate a protein shown to protect against neurodegeneration
A new study led by Dr Marco Brancaccio (UK DRI at Imperial) and Dr Marieke Hoekstra (former UK DRI at Imperial, now VIB-KU Leuven Center for Brain & Disease Research) offers a deeper insight into how a neuroprotective pathway is regulated both by temperature and the body clock. This research, published in the journal PNAS, could open up new therapeutic avenues for neurodegenerative disease. Read more on the UK DRI website
Introducing Cynthia Sandor: Pioneering earlier detection of Parkinson’s
Dr Cynthia Sandor, former Emerging Leader at the UK DRI at Cardiff, joins the UK DRI at Imperial as a Group Leader, where she will be tackling early diagnosis of Parkinson’s.
With a background in genetics, Dr Sandor uses computational methods to bring greater understanding to the underlying molecular mechanisms of Parkinson’s. Read more about Cynthia's work on the UK DRI website.
