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://profiles.ucl.ac.uk/7036-selina-wray