Anna Flury is a PhD candidate at the CUNY Graduate Center, where she conducts her research in the laboratory of Pinar Ayata at the Neuroscience Initiative of the Advanced Science Research Center. Her work focuses on understanding the maladaptive roles of microglia in Alzheimer’s Disease, with particular emphasis on how cellular stress pathways contribute to microglia-mediated neurodegeneration. Through a multi-modal experimental approach that integrates ex vivo tissue imaging, ribosome profiling, and both in vitro and in vivo models, Anna investigates how distinct microglial states influence disease progression. Her research has identified a stressed microglial subset that plays a central role in regulating pathology and impairing neuronal survival through the secretion of toxic lipids.
In this webinar, Anna Flury will:
•Describe how a subset of microglia in Alzheimer’s Disease is defined by activation of a cellular stress pathway
•Explain how stressed microglia exacerbate disease pathology and how inhibiting this stress response can significantly reduce pathological outcomes
•Characterize the gain-of-function neurodegenerative phenotype of stressed microglia, including the secretion of lipids that are toxic to surrounding brain cells