In collaboration with the Dementia Research Society, we present Cliona Farrell, a PhD student at UCL that works on understanding neuroinflammation in individuals with Down Syndrome and Alzheimer’s disease
Clíona Farrell
cliona.farrell.20@ucl.ac.uk
Clíona Farrell is a PhD student at UCL working on early onset dementia in individuals with Down Syndrome (DS) in Frances Wiseman’s lab. She has an undergraduate degree in Neuroscience from Trinity College Dublin and worked as a research assistant in the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, where she studied ALS and Parkinson’s disease.
In Frances Wiseman’s lab she studies Alzheimer’s disease (AD) in people with Down Syndrome, focusing on understanding neuroinflammation in DS before developing Alzheimer’s and as a result of it. To do this she uses mouse models for DS, human post-mortem brain tissue and she even generates organotypic brain slice cultures.
There are around 6 million people living with Down syndrome in the world, and many of them develop early onset dementia. Individuals with AD-DS show greater levels of amyloid beta build up in the brain than those with just AD. Not only this but people with DS have an increased risk of infectious and autoimmune diseases, therefore inflammation could also play a role in AD-DS.