We’ve been having a bit of fun the last few months with some big, BIG datasets. I wasn’t quite ready to fully commit to RNA-seq, but we do need to start expanding our gene expression repertoire to include larger panels. Enter the Nanostring Neuroinflammation panel. This new technique has given us the potential to profile Read More…
About us
The revolving door of manuscripts
COVID has meant more time working at home, which means finding critical time to continue to write and publish while balancing the other obligations of homelife. Due to some beneficial circumstances of the late spring and summer, our lab has been able to get several papers submitted. We have one manuscript in re-review with an Read More…
Our First R01 Has Been FUNDED!
On March 12, 2020 or so, I walked into my dean’s office in tears. The university was ramping down operations, the country was shutting down due to the growing coronavirus pandemic, and our lab had simultaneously just begun on a year-long project to assess the chronic effects of seizures in mice with Alzheimer’s disease-associated risk Read More…
Cross Continent Collaboration
Back in 2018, when we could still freely travel the world for scientific collaboration, our lab was approached by a colleague in the UK interested in a new drug discovery collaboration. Dr. Alan Morgan, Professor of Cellular and Molecular Physiology at the University of Liverpool, contacted our group about profiling a repurposed compound his laboratory Read More…
Years of Work Distilled into a Few Tables
As I recently reviewed a set of interim data with one of my students, we both remarked at how underwhelming the data set appeared even though it amounted to weeks of work and several dozens of mice. It is sometimes striking how pharmacological evaluations, which require close to 50 animals to attain statistical power in Read More…
Pause for Reflection
Diablo lake is the second of three reservoirs created along the Skagit river in northern Washington state in North Cascades National Park. This lake was formed with the completion of the Diablo dam in 1930 to generate hydroelectric power for the city of Seattle. The resulting series of reservoir lakes fed by glacier melt provide Read More…
Return to Lab Work SOPs
This spring has been quite an adventure! We are now trying to work under appropriate standard operating procedures (SOPs) to conduct essential biomedical research in the time of the SARS-CoV2 pandemic. As a result of animal allergies, many personnel on our research team are quite accustomed to working with masks on (i.e. N95s!). We often Read More…
Virtual UW Undergraduate Research Symposium
Our lab routinely welcomes undergraduate students. We provide an encouraging and collaborative training environment to students who are interested in neuroscience and drug discovery. One of the most exciting highlights of undergraduate training every year is the opportunity for our students to present at the UW Undergraduate Research Symposium. Thousands of undergraduates congregate in Mary Gates Read More…
Applying mouse seizure models to evaluate the impact of Alzheimer’s disease associated risk factors
Roughly 5% of all cases of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) are caused by genetic variants in three genes, causing autosomal dominant early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. Duplications in the amyloid precursor protein (APP) gene, and variants in presenilin 1 and presenilin 2 (PSEN 1 and PSEN2) cause AD nearly 100% of the time. There is also an increased Read More…
Take Care with Repeated Drug Administration via the Intraperitoneal Route
Chance findings from our laboratory over the winter of 2016-2017 demonstrated that repeated administration of investigational compounds formulated in 0.5% methylcellulose (MC) by the intraperitoneal (IP) route to mice could cause significant histological damage to peripheral organs, such as the liver, spleen and kidneys. Because MC is a very common formulation vehicle that is often used Read More…