Anneke Miedema MSc

Title: The role of microglia in multiple sclerosis lesions

Project: Multiple sclerosis (ms) is a common disease of the central nervous system (cns), characterized by chronic inflammation, demyelination and neuronal damage. Different lesion types develop within the cns of ms patients in both gray and white matter, resulting in a wide variety of symptoms including impaired mobility.

My project aims to get a better understanding of lesion development and lesion progression in ms. My focus will be on the role of microglia in this process. Microglia are the innate immune cells of the cns and also play important roles in brain homeostasis. I will study this by using novel transcriptomic methods to identify microglia/lesion specific gene expression profiles in human post-mortem brain tissue from ms patients. Understanding the way how lesions are formed and switch to progression might lead to new insights for drug targets. Next, I will use EAE and Cuprizone ms mice models to modulate microglia specific candidate genes, which will be identified by the transcriptomic analysis.

Funding: ms fellowship