![\"Headshot](\"\/camed\/files\/2022\/03\/Julia-TCW-e1656014298395.jpg\")
Julia TCW, PhD, assistant professor of pharmacology & experimental therapeutics, has received a three-year, $300,000 grant from the BrightFocus Foundation. The award will fund her research project, \u201cModulation of astrocyte matrisome signals reprogram microglia that can be targeted to mitigate Alzheimer’s disease.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alzheimer\u2019s disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder and the most common cause of dementia, affecting more than 5.8 million individuals in the U.S. Scientists have discovered some genetic variants that increase the risk for developing Alzheimer\u2019s; the most well-known of these for people over the age of 65 is the APOE <\/em>\u03b54 allele.<\/p>\n \u201cAlthough the relationship between APOE4 and AD risk is well-established, the mechanisms underlying this effect, in particular human brain cell types, are not entirely clear. The emergence of cellular reprogramming technology creates an exciting opportunity to resolve questions about human genetics and AD risk by facilitating experiments using human cells,\u201d says TCW, who also is a director of the Laboratory of Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell Therapeutics.<\/p>\n To comprehensively assess the effect of human APOE4 on human brain cell types, TCW has characterized the APOE4 genotype-phenotype relationship in four brain cell types: microglia, astrocytes, brain microvascular endothelial cells and mixed cultures of cortical neurons and astrocytes (referred to as mixed cortical cultures) derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and identified astrocyte-driven matrisome dysregulation in human APOE4 Alzheimer\u2019s brain. The study will assess whether microglia can be targeted by modulating astrocytes in APOE4 carriers, which can reduce AD risk.<\/p>\n TCW received her PhD and AM (Master of Arts) in molecular and cellular biology from Harvard University. She then pursued her postdoctoral research in the department of neuroscience at the Ronald M. Loeb Center for Alzheimer\u2019s Disease at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York. Subsequently she served there as a research assistant professor in the department of genetics and genomic sciences where her research focus was on the development of iPSC models and AD genetics.<\/p>\n In addition to BrightFocus, TCW has been awarded the Druckenmiller Fellowship award from New York Stem Cell Foundation, K and R awards from National Institutes of Health-National Institute of Aging and selected as 2022 Tofflar Scholar from Karen Toffler Charitable Trust.<\/p>\n BrightFocus Foundation is a premier source of private research funding to defeat Alzheimer\u2019s, macular degeneration and glaucoma. The organization has supported over 275 projects, a $60 million investment, over the past three years alone to find the cures for diseases of mind and sight. It shares the latest research findings and best practices to empower families impacted by these diseases.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The assistant professor of pharmacology & experimental therapeutics focuses on human genetics and AD risk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":903,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[91,143,90],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108235"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/903"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108235"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":108237,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108235\/revisions\/108237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}