Amber Nolan
University of Washington, WA·Neuroscience
After a traumatic brain injury (TBI), the brain's immune system can stay switched on long after the initial damage. That prolonged response can block repair and drive disease.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Microbiology & Immunology
- Topics
traumatic brain injury
microglia
P2Y12 receptor
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Nov 2028
What they work on
- Establish which neuron subtypes satellite microglia wrap around after traumatic brain injury and how each contact changes neuronal function, using transgenic mice that label microglia and specific neuron types.
- Test whether P2Y12, a microglial receptor that senses signals from neurons, drives the contacts between satellite microglia and neurons, network hyperexcitability, and reversal-learning deficits after TBI in mice.
- Validate satellite microglia–neuron interactions, P2Y12 receptor levels and function, and microglial gene-expression profiles in human TBI tissue compared with the mouse model.
More about the research
Microglia, the brain's resident immune cells, also help control how excitable neurons are, meaning how readily they fire. It is not known whether their effect on neuronal firing helps or harms recovery after TBI.
Why it matters
People with traumatic brain injury often develop lasting problems with brain circuits and thinking. By showing how satellite microglia and their P2Y12 receptors change neuronal firing after injury, this work could point to treatment targets for these circuit and cognitive problems. Checking the mouse findings in human tissue is meant to make those targets more relevant to patients.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Robert Marr
Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science, IL·Neuroscience
Test how pharmacologically altering the activity of neprilysin and NEP2, enzymes that degrade amyloid-beta, changes acute pathology and recovery in the days after traumatic brain injury in APP-humanized mice.
John Finan
University of Illinois Chicago, IL·Biomedical Engineering·Early-career
Produce isogenic human induced pluripotent stem cell lines with and without the Piezo1 E756del variant, which keeps this stretch-activated calcium channel open longer.
Joseph Wider
University of Michigan, MI·Neuroscience
Determine how brain trauma and therapeutic near-infrared light affect mitochondrial dynamics and turnover, the processes by which mitochondria reshape themselves and are replaced, after TBI.
The school
University of Washington: 81 labs on PI Pages, $1.7B a year on research, 694 research doctorates a year.
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