Hello, DCoP members! This is our quarterly topic where you all can share the work you’ve been doing, including papers or pre-prints you’ve written or been involved with, or talks you’ve given. Please use this thread to add links to any relevant articles that you have written recently, or to link to slides and/or recordings of your conference presentations.
Additionally, we encourage you to share what funding you are applying for and/or what grant programs you are aware of which will be opening/closing soon. Whether these programs are listed in @danieltds 's post “Grant providers for neurodegenerative disease research” or fall outside that list, other community members may find it helpful to hear how you and your colleagues are navigating the funding landscape.
We love hearing what you’re working on, and sharing your projects can be a great way to make connections or foster new collaborations.
Really looking forward to seeing your work and hearing your input!
npj Dementia, one of the newer members of the nature family, is looking for editorial board members with a specific focus for non-US based people. I joined and have been really enjoying working with the team & editor Jen Yokoyama. She specifically asked to spread the word with hopes they can get more people outside of her bubble, so if you have any interest in cognition & dementia I highly recommend! it’s a good opportunity to learn about the backstage for publishing, put on your CV, and also start making changes in the field. we pushed for more waivers particularly from LMIC for instance, we get to dictate the topics with a focus on DEI and more representation from LMIC research, so it’s giving us the opportunity to fight for papers that are traditionally rejected from high impact journals because they “lack generalizability” for not being from North America/Europe centers… feel free to poke me for any further details, and please share with whoever you feel might be interested! (also, if you feel you’re not qualified, don’t jump to any conclusions, shut that imposter down! fill out the application and let them decide if you’re a good fit or not, you miss 100% of the opportunities you don’t take and you lose absolutely nothing by applying to this) https://www.nature.com/npjdementia/
Sharing information on a funding opportunity from The Neuro (McGill University). Applications are now open for the 2025 Neuro-Irv and Helga Cooper Foundation Open Science Prizes! These international prizes award up to $100,000 annually to individuals and teams advancing open science in neuroscience. Applications and reference letters are due by 12:00pm (EDT), Friday, August 15th .
This was a project we started for Ahalya & Celina to have a nice paper they can put on their CV for future med school/PhD applications and their first ever paper to work on. I mentored them while they were high school students and they kept in touch during undergrad, so I’m uber excited we got to officially create and publish this beauty. I was often advised not to start new authors on review papers as it might be too burdensome, but I think that really depends on the trainee. Ahalya & Celina were so capable and responsible that they stayed on top of things and asked questions whenever needed for clarification. I think it gave them a good overview of the current knowledge & gaps in the field to start creating their own ideas, and also what the papers would need for better interpretability and future use when they’re leading their own research papers. It was exhausting from my end for sure, but worth it. Hope you enjoy and find it useful!
Hi! We just published a study in Brain, Behavior, and Immunity where we transplanted human microglia progenitor cells to immunosuppressed mice injected with alpha-synuclein fibrils.
Microglia, brain-resident immune cells, are involved in pathophysiology of several neurodegenerative diseases, including Parkinson’s disease. Given significant species-specific differences in microglia gene expression, particularly in disease-risk genes, as well as the highly reactive nature of these cells, studying human microglia in a whole brain environment is essential. Here, we established a humanized mouse model by transplanting human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived hematopoietic progenitor cells into the striatum of immunodeficient adult mice and injected human alpha-synuclein preformed fibrils to model Parkinson’s disease pathology. Transplanted human cells engraft, mature into microglia and maintain their phenotype for at least three months post-transplantation. These human microglia interact with alpha-synuclein, significantly limiting its propagation from the striatum to the substantia nigra and further reducing local small aggregates; they also mildly protect tyrosine hydroxylase neurons there. Transcriptomic profiling reveals 56 differentially expressed genes in human microglia in response to alpha-synuclein preformed fibrils, while host mouse cells show 202 gene expression changes, including an upregulation of gene Hcrt (fold change = 7.77, p = 0.0015). Immunohistochemistry analysis further confirms the preservation of hypocretin-positive neurons in the hypothalamus of the transplanted mice (p = 0.0079). The findings highlight the neuroprotective role of human microglia and establish a more disease-relevant in vivo model for investigating alpha-synuclein aggregation and therapeutic interventions in Parkinson’s disease.
The bulk RNA sequencing data of human microglia and mouse cells in the striatum (treated with alpha-synuclein fibrils, vehicle, or no treatment) is available at the GEO repository.
MDS 2025 is riiiiight around the corner! Who is going?? I’ll be there and will lead the YMG events that I had posted in the MDS 2025 young members group and also encourage peeps to stop by at the social media booth to record some short videos! MDS remains one of my favorite meetings since I get to catch up with friends from all over the world, including my home country Turkey. Hawaii didn’t turn out to be the best location since USA is weird with visas nowadays and it’s pretty expensive but I’m still looking forward to meeting anyone who might be there! If you’re traveling solo and feeling shy or uncomfortable, please reach out. Happy to get some introductions going for you and don’t feel scared to reach out!!!
I have an uber fresh video podcast for lightning talks! Sharing in case anyone was interested, if you directly head to the end you can also catch the summary of our tips
yayyyy! we’ll probably do a meet up for social media ambassadors for a picture, i’ve been trying to get it during the young members networking event but Lauren should reach out about it soon if she hadn’t already done so!
we’ll probably do a meet up for social media ambassadors for a picture, i’ve been trying to get it during the young members networking event but Lauren should reach out about it soon if she hadn’t already done so!