Summary
Sarah Marzi is a Senior Lecturer at the UK Dementia Research Institute at King's College London and Honorary Senior Lecturer within the Department of Brain Sciences at Imperial College London. Her research focusses on epigenetic regulation in neurodegenerative disease, specifically studying the molecular drivers of ALS, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. The Marzi lab uses a combination of wet lab and computational genomics approaches to understand the regulatory consequences of environmental and genetic risk factors of neurodegenerative disease. Dr Marzi leads the Experimental Models Working Group of the DEMON network.
Dr Marzi graduated in mathematics and psychology from the University of Freiburg, Germany, before undertaking a PhD at King's College London. Her work looked at epigenetic signatures in human brain associated with ageing and neurodegeneration, as well as DNA modifications associated with early-life stress and victimisation. She identified widespread differences in histone acetylation in Alzheimer's disease compared to neuropathology-free brain, linking these epigenetic marks with genetic risk burden and gene expression signatures.
LAB MEMBERS
Dr Joy Ismail, postdoctoral researcher
Maria Tsalenchuk, PhD student
Kitty Murphy, PhD student
Janis Transfeld, PhD student (2nd supervisor)
Yuqian Ye, bioinformatics research assistant
Paulina Urbanaviciute, bioinformatics research assistant
NEUROGENOMICS SEMINARS
The neurogenomics seminars are a biweekly virtual seminar series hosted by Dr Marzi covering exciting new work from the field. Seminars are held on Tuesdays at 3pm UK time and we try to particularly promote work from researchers in the earlier stages of their careers. You can check out recodings from previous seminars on our Youtube channel and request to join our mailing list to receive invites for upcoming seminars here.
MEDIA
Science Actually podcast S2E2 - Ageing and Disease: Can our environment affect neurodegeneration? (10/10/2022)
Royal Society Pairing Scheme - Insights from Westminster - Dementia Researcher podcast with Dr Fiona Mc Lean and Dr Dayne Beccano-Kelly (22/08/2022)
A Cellular Malfunction: how cells lose control of their genes in Alzheimer’s disease - talk at the Making It Brain neuroscience research & careers webinar (15/09/2021)
The challenges of reproducibility - talk presented as part of a reproducibility workshop organised by the DEMON network, UK DRI and the UK Reproducibility Network (27/07/2021)
My path into neuroepigenomics - blog post for the DEMON network (01/07/2021)
The Genomics Lab podcast - Epigenetic regulation in neurodegenerative diseases (30/06/2021)
Epigenetic regulation in neurodegenerative disease - invited talk at the QMUL epigenetics webinar series (09/03/2021)
Careers in Dementia Research - Technology, Data and Innovation Researchers - careers panel for the Dementia Research Careers Festival and National Careers (03/03/2021)
A conversation with Dr Sarah Marzi, UK DRI at Imperial - interview on neurodegenerative disease epigenetics and science in lockdown (14/05/2020).
Dysregulation of histone acetylation in Alzheimer's disease - invited talk given at the PGC Pathways to Therapeutics conference (30/04/2020)
Rising research stars bolster Imperial’s dementia research mission - article introducing the new Safra fellows at Imperial College London (04/02/2020)
Publications
Journals
Winchester LM, Harshfield EL, Shi L, et al., 2023, Artificial intelligence for biomarker discovery in Alzheimer's disease and dementia., Alzheimers Dement
Bucholc M, James C, Khleifat AA, et al., 2023, Artificial intelligence for dementia research methods optimization., Alzheimers Dement
Tsalenchuk M, Gentleman S, Marzi S, 2023, Linking environmental risk factors with epigenetic mechanisms in Parkinson’s disease, Npj Parkinson's Disease, Vol:9, ISSN:2373-8057, Pages:1-12
Bettencourt C, Skene N, Bandres-Ciga S, et al., 2023, Artificial intelligence for dementia genetics and omics., Alzheimers Dement
Ranson JM, Bucholc M, Lyall D, et al., 2023, Harnessing the potential of machine learning and artificial intelligence for dementia research, Brain Informatics, Vol:10, ISSN:2198-4018