The first Monday of each month, the Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience will host monthly seminars to bring together awardees, affiliated professors and students for a series of 'lab meeting' styled talks. Two speakers will discuss their brain resilience research, experiences in the field, and answer questions about their work.

To support our researchers' participation in this open science ‘lab-meeting style’ exchange of ideas, these seminars are not streamed/recorded and are only open to members of the Stanford community.

Jian Xiong, Stanford University

Modulating Bis(Monoacylglycero)Phosphate for enhanced lysosomal function: A novel therapeutic strategy for neurodegenerative diseases

NAI thrive to understand the roles of lysosomes in physiological and pathological conditions. Lysosomes are both degradation compartment and metabolic controlling hub, and dysregulation of lysosomal functions are frequently implicated in a vast number of diseases including neurodegenerative diseases, however, the systematic knowledge of the molecular mechanism by which lysosomal contributes to these diseases is lacking. Ion channels are the primary mediators of neuronal activity, defects in neuronal ion channel activity are linked with many kinds of neurodegenerative diseases. Interestingly, besides typical ion channels that are involved in the neuronal activity, defects in lysosomal ion channels, such as TRPML1, CLN7 and CLC-7 are also implicated in neuropathy.

Dan Herrick, Stanford University

Cell-Free mRNA sequencing of human CSF for molecular characterization of severe traumatic brain injury

Current methods of characterizing severe traumatic brain injury (sTBI) are limited, limiting advancements of sTBI treatment and prognostication. CSF TBI biomarker research has focused on protein and microRNA due to their stability and ease of isolation. In comparison, messenger RNA (mRNA) holds great potential to detail the heterogeneous molecular landscape of sTBI. Towards this end, our group is isolating and analyzing cell-free mRNA (cfRNA) from CSF of individual sTBI patients using next-generation sequencing. We will present preliminary data from the initial patients in our first-in-human pilot study sequencing cfRNA isolated from small volumes of individual sTBI patient CSF and also discuss future directions.