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PhD Candidate
University of Cincinnati
I do not have any relevant financial / non-financial relationships with any proprietary interests.
My interests in TBI and vision research led me back to Dr. Nathan Evanson’s lab at the University of Cincinnati where I continue to
work on projects both related to my dissertation topic and those associated with Dr. Evanson’s grants. In
addition to our collaborations with Drs. McGuire and Robson, other collaborative projects include work with
Drs. Eric Wohleb and James Herman, through which we are examining the role of chronic variable stress
after TBI on behavioral (e.g., memory and stress behaviors) and histological outcomes.
The foundations for my graduate work stem from the initial observation during adolescent experiments that
their increased mortality was likely due to immediate post-injury apnea. In an attempt to reduce this
mortality, we briefly placed mice into an oxygen chamber until normal breathing was regained (resulting in
a 40% improvement). Upon examination of behavioral and ER stress data, however, we realized that
oxygen was doing more than simply increasing survival. In fact, 3-5 minutes of oxygen seems to be enough
to chronically alter ER stress pathway activation and to reduce ER-associated oxidative stress, gliosis, and
axonal degeneration. These observations inspired my commentary in the Journal of Neuroscience
Research, a paper estimated for submission in June, numerous presentations and invited talks, and in the
acquisition of an internal seed grant through CCHMC. I am, therefore, interested in the relationship
between ER and oxidative stress, which is the focus of the first aim in this grant proposal. I recently also
confirmed that the mechanism of axon damage in our TON model is the result of shearing/stretching of
axons (rather than compaction) and that this is occurring up to 2.4mm from the cell body. This is important
as it gives me a unique opportunity to follow proximal injury responses in the axon, as I’ve proposed
throughout my aims. Thus, I have shown my ability to perform this research through my publishing in the
field, my role in the discovery of ER stress activation, my preliminary work implicating oxidative stress, and
my examination of optic nerve histology to show axon injury localization.
