Violeta Duran Laforet – BrightFocus Foundation A2022006F

Violeta Duran Laforet – BrightFocus Foundation A2022006F - Postdoctoral Fellowship Program in Alzheimer's Disease Research

“Harnessing spatial transcriptomics to investigate the intersection of senescence and inflammation in neurodegeneration”

7/1/22 – 6/30/24, $200,000

Aging is the major risk factor for Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). Senescence, a hallmark of aging, is a process by which a cell no longer can proliferate.  Since microglia, the primary immune cell of the central nervous system, become senescent in AD, I will investigate if they initiate the inflammatory process in the aging brain and study if senescent cells are present in specific locations within the brain in AD. To do so, I will implement an innovative approach called MERFISH to look at 100’s of genes directly in tissue. Ultimately, this study could result in identifying new therapeutic targets.