Grand Rounds Recap: January 15, 2020

On January 15,2020, we welcomed Shane Liddelow, PhD from NYU as our Grand Rounds lecturer. Dr. Liddelow runs a lab at the Neuroscience Institute and conducts a number of projects related to astrocytes, a type of cell in the central nervous system that supports the blood-brain barrier and repairs nervous tissue following injury. In his talk, he focused on reactive astrocytes and the mechanisms that create them and how they affect different diseases. Their work has demonstrated that reactive astrocytes release a toxin that can kill neurons and oligodendrocytes (myelinating cells) if the cells have been made susceptible through injury or disease. This is relevant to MS because it affects remyelination and reactive astrocytes no longer do their job of cleaning up myelin debris. Further research is necessary to understand the multiple activation states of astrocytes and what turns normal astrocytes into reactive astrocytes.