Single-Cell and Spatial Transcriptomics and Epigenomics of Oligodendroglia in Neural Development and in Multiple Sclerosis

Event Details

Type

Friday Lecture Series

Speaker(s)

Gonçalo Castelo-Branco, Ph.D., professor of glial cell biology, department of medical biochemistry and biophysics, Karolinska Institutet

Speaker bio(s)

Oligodendroglia mediate myelination of neurons in the central nervous system, a process that is targeted by an autoimmune attack in Multiple Sclerosis (MS). Dr. Gonçalo Castelo-Branco’s research group has developed single-cell and spatial transcriptomic and epigenomic methods and applied them to MS disease paradigms to uncover how transitions to pathological states occur at a molecular and cellular level.

In his Nicholson Lecture, Dr. Castelo-Branco will discuss how his group has identified novel, distinct oligodendroglia cell states in development and MS. For instance, his team found that homeostatic oligodendroglia are immune primed at the epigenomic level, and that disease-associated glia arise independently of active MS lesions, which propagate in a centrifugal fashion.

Dr. Castelo-Branco has been a professor of glial cell biology at Karolinska Institutet (KI), Sweden since 2021. After receiving his Ph.D. in 2005, he completed postdocs at KI and University of Cambridge, UK, starting his lab at KI in 2012. He is a Knut and Alice Wallenberg Scholar, Distinguished Professor of the Swedish Research Council, and member of the Nobel Assembly at KI since 2023. He received the 2022 Hans Wigzell Prize, the 2021 Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Gustafsson Prize (medicine), the 2021 Fernström Prize, the 2019 Swedish Society for Medical Research 100 years Jubileum Prize and European Research Council Consolidator and Advanced Grants in both 2015 and 2023.

Open to

Tri-Institutional