News

Within the lab of Carlene Moore, PhD, Ashley Moore, MS, MAT, (no relation) does “a little bit of everything,” acting as a lab manager, performing western blots, teaching and guiding undergraduate research students and more--and that’s just how she likes it. For this week’s Spotlight interview, Moore talks to us about this work, how her five years of experience as a public school teacher inform her work, and loving concerts and baking for family and friends when she’s not at work.

New research from the Duke Neurology Department provided insights into our ability to improve patient care and better understand neurological conditions. The 11 studies featuring our faculty, staff, and trainees published this September include the discovery of an HIV medication’s surprising potential to treat dystonia, an analysis of brain tumor patients admitted to intensive care, and a personal story of one faculty member’s grandfather, who lived through the ups and downs of a century of health care in the United States.

Mengyi (Miko) Liu first became interested in bioinformatics and computational biology during her sophomore year of college, when she learned about the depth and breadth of information those fields could bring to health care. Now, she’s a PhD student within the lab of Simon Gregory, PhD, where she’s studying the tumor microenvironment of brain cancer.

Members of the Duke Neurology Department contributed to seventeen peer-reviewed research studies published this August. Members of the lab of Nicole Calakos, MD, PhD, discovered that a medication created to treat patients with HIV may help people with dystonia. New translational research provided the most accurate atlas of the mouse model to date and answered questions about late-onset Alzheimer’s disease.

The American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC) has awarded Leonard White, PhD, the 2021 Alpha Omega Alpha Robert J. Glaser Distinguished Teacher Award. These national awards, given to only four individuals a year, recognize outstanding contributions to medical education made by gifted teachers.

This July, new research from the Duke Neurology Department answered questions about the subcellular origins of itching, how COVID-19 is affecting people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, what factors influence people eligible for epilepsy surgery to move forward with the procedure and topics. The paragraphs below summarize the 11 articles appearing in peer-reviewed publications from our faculty, staff, and trainees. Check them out and find links to the original publications below.

Neuromuscular Disease

New publications written by members of the Duke Neurology Department published this June advanced our understanding of the origins of Alzheimer’s disease, stroke, and spinal injuries, as well as offering new insights on how to better diagnose and treat these and other conditions. Our faculty contributed to recent articles in Lancet Neurology, Stroke, and other high-impact journals. Read more about each of these stories, and find links to the original articles themselves, in the paragraphs below.
 

Neuromuscular Disease

Members of the Duke Neurology Department did their part for Stroke Awareness Month, contributing to eight new peer-reviewed studies published this May. But our other divisions didn’t hold back either, with thirteen other articles advancing our understanding of neuro-oncology, multiple sclerosis, headache, and other subjects.

Read about each of the studies published from members of the Duke Neurology Department below, and find links to the original journal articles as well.

Stroke

Members of the Duke Neurology Department advanced the fields of clinical, translational, and basic neuroscience this April with 14 new peer-reviewed studies. Nicole Calakos, MD, PhD, was the senior author of a new study in Science that  expands our understanding of the integrated stress response in the brain and how it influences learning and memory.

Daniel Gingerich joined the laboratory of Ornit Chiba-Falek, PhD, last year, exactly two days before the COVID-19 pandemic forced a campus-wide shut down, forcing him to learn a new set of technical skills from home. Since then Gingerich has become proficient in single-cell data analysis, and is using those techniques to better understand genetic and epigenetic dysregulation in late onset Alzheimer's disease.