Welcome Jereme to CVR!
As a recent addition to the Clear Vision Research team, I’ve joined the group to study how different forms of stress and neuroinflammation impact processes involved with neurodegeneration. My research journey began in my Honours degree at The University of Queensland where I began to study the physiological impacts of psychological stress and I developed skills in setting up assays for stress hormones and oxidative stress. I stayed on at The University of Queensland to study the link between psychological stress and oxidative stress during my PhD. I was able to extend my understanding of these systems and identify how these interact over the short term following stress exposure while learning new skills in molecular biology.
After completing a Bachelor’s, Honours, and Doctoral degree at The University of Queensland, I decided it was time for a change of scenery. I accepted a position at the Medical Research Council Toxicology Unit which, at the time, was in Leicester in the United Kingdom. This was a fantastic opportunity to learn about the physiological and pathological aspects of nitric oxide, a signalling molecule found in the brain, and how this changed during the development of neurodegenerative prion disease. I was able to work with multiple animal models including drosophila and learn new skills in microscopy and biometal analysis that all together sparked my interest in neurodegenerative research.
When I returned to Australia, I joined La Trobe University in Melbourne to study neuroinflammatory processes in a range of neurodegenerative diseases. A large part of this involved extracellular vesicles (EVs) which are small packets of information released by cells to communicate with their surroundings. I used the EVs released from microglia, the resident immune cells of the CNS, to identify changes in nitric oxide signalling occurring during an inflammatory challenge. This gave us excellent insights into the proteins that are involved in neuroinflammatory modulation occurring via EVs.
Joining the Clear Vision Research group, I’ll be applying these skills to the study of neuroinflammatory communication during neurodegeneration where we’ll seek to answer some of the fundamental questions that have so far remained elusive.
- Jereme
