Vanessa Hall

Department of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, University of Copenhagen

Title: Navigating through the Entorhinal Cortex

Abstract: The medial entorhinal cortex lies in the allocortex and plays an important role in processing spatial memory. In Alzheimer’s disease, loss of spatial memory is one of the earliest symptoms and pathology of the disease strikes the transentorhinal area first before spreading through the entorhinal area. Our group has sought to learn more about this region of the brain by studying unique features that underly its development. We have also determined the cellular complexity of the medial entorhinal cortex by using single cell RNA sequencing. Using our single cell dataset, we have developed a protocol for producing a vulnerable neuron in the entorhinal cortex from human induced pluripotent stem cells by using a forward programming approach. This stem cell model will be particularly relevant for studying early mechanisms of the disease ex-vivo.

Please join us prior to the talk for coffee and cookies.