All times are displayed in Eastern Canadian Time (ET).
Speaker: Victor Lau (left)
Paper: Ferroptosis of microglia in aging human white matter injury
Learning Objectives: In this Journal Club, Victor will be talking about a potential player involved across neurodegenerative diseases: iron-rich microglia. Victor will go over a paper with a main focus on identifying iron-rich microglia as enriched in VCID, why this arguably deserves further investigation, and explore a bit on potential mechanisms and studies to explore next in these pathology-associated cells.
Learning objectives:
Learn what microglia are, and their general roles in the brain.
Explore evidence and arguments that iron accumulation in microglia is at least associated with disease pathologies involved in VCID.
Learn about some of the methods and challenges involved with investigating microglia in humans.
Explore potential ideas and next steps investigating iron-rich microglia in VCID, from both a diagnostic and treatment approach.
About the Speaker: Victor is a PhD student co-supervised by Drs. Ali Khan and Shawn Whitehead. His projects aim to provide a proof-of-concept diagnostics for neurodegenerative diseases incorporating involvement from iron-rich microglia, starting with dementias including VCID and AD. He’d also like to build some evidence that iron-rich microglia are potential targets, via in-vitro and staining approaches.
Speaker: Sandra Zdrale (right)
Talk Description: Sandra will be discussing the use of circulating microglia-derived extracellular vesicles (EVs) as potential biomarkers of neuroinflammation following stroke. She will explore a paper investigating plasma EV signatures associated with microglial activation in an experimental stroke model, highlighting their potential as minimally invasive indicators of ongoing brain injury.
Learning Objectives:
Understand the role of microglia and their response to ischemic stroke.
Explore how extracellular vesicles can reflect microglial activation and neuroinflammatory processes.
Discuss the potential and challenges of using circulating microglial EVs as stroke biomarkers.
About the Speaker: Sandra is a PhD student supervised by Dr. Shawn Whitehead. Her projects aim to develop a multimodal prognostic approach for post-stroke cognitive impairment by integrating microglia-derived EV signatures with MRI and cognitive assessments to improve risk stratification. She aims to establish MEVs as minimally invasive biomarkers capable of capturing neuroinflammatory changes that may contribute to long-term cognitive decline after stroke.
Speaker: Chris Kang (not pictured)
Paper: A generalizable foundation model for analysis of human brain MRI