Dr Cortina Chen

My research has focused on stress as a mechanism for increasing nitric oxide production which has been implicated in the aetiology of stress-related and other neuropathological conditions. I then joined the Neuroinflammation Laboratory at The University of Queensland (Australia) to studied the underlying neuroinflammatory pathogenesis of dipeptide repeat proteins in C9orf72-linked MND. By utilising several inflammatory-related transgenic mouse lines lacking one of the innate immune C3a/C5a/C5L2 receptors of the complement cascade, I have focused on characterising the involvement of these inflammatory components in mediating central stress responsiveness. I am currently within the WT-MRC Institute of Metabolic Science to study the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying diseases of the brain such as obesity and neurodegeneration using pluripotent stem cell-derived cellular co-culture models.