Seli­na Wray

Title

Human stem cell mod­els of Alzheimer’s dis­ease and famil­ial British dementia

Abstract

The devel­op­ment of human induced pluripo­tent stem cells (iPSC) and their sub­se­quent dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion into neu­rons has pro­vid­ed new oppor­tu­ni­ties for the gen­er­a­tion of phys­i­o­log­i­cal­ly rel­e­vant, in vit­ro dis­ease mod­els. I will present our work using iPSC to mod­el famil­ial Alzheimer’s Dis­ease (fAD) and famil­ial British Demen­tia (FBD). I will dis­cuss the muta­tion-spe­cif­ic effects of APP and PSEN1 muta­tions on Abe­ta gen­er­a­tion in neu­rons, and how these have revealed dis­tinct mech­a­nisms that may con­tribute to clin­i­cal het­ero­gene­ity in dis­ease. Using cul­tured neu­rons and microglia, we have also start­ed to uncov­er non-cell autonomous con­tri­bu­tions to amy­loid pathol­o­gy in fAD and FBD, high­light­ing how microglia may both pro­tect and pro­mote from the gen­er­a­tion of amyloid. 

Biog­ra­phy

Seli­na Wray is an Alzheimer’s Research UK Senior Research Fel­low in the Depart­ment of Neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive Dis­ease, UCL Queen Square Insti­tute of Neu­rol­o­gy. 
Seli­na received her degree in Bio­chem­istryand Bio­log­i­cal Chem­istry from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Not­ting­ham in 2004, before­un­der­tak­ing PhD train­ing in Dr Diane Hanger’s lab­o­ra­to­ry at the Insti­tute ofPsy­chi­a­try, Kings Col­lege Lon­don. Seli­nawas award­ed her PhD in 2008 and sub­se­quent­ly joined the lab­o­ra­to­ry of Pro­fes­sor­John Hardy at UCL Insti­tute of Neu­rol­o­gy as an Alzheimer’s Research UK Junior Research­Fel­low. 
Seli­na was award­ed the 2018 ARUK David Hague Ear­ly Career Inves­ti­ga­tor of the Year award and the 2014 Red Mag­a­zine Woman of the Year award in the Pio­neer category. 

Home-page: https://​pro​files​.ucl​.ac​.uk/​7​0​3​6​-​s​e​l​i​n​a​-​w​ray