Steven Sloan
Neuroscientist. Glial Biologist. Astrocyte enthusiast. Neurodevelopmental lab at Emory University studying the role of glia in health and disease.
www.SloanLab.org
- Excited to share an important new pre-print from the lab led by incredibly talented postdoc @maureenbiologies.bsky.social, a neurotoxicologist who came to the lab with an ambitious goal of understanding the consequences of toxicant exposure in human neurodevelopment. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
- We decided to investigate one of the most infamous and widely prevalent neurotoxicants—Lead (Pb). In the US, approximately 2.5% of pregnant women exhibit high blood Pb levels (!!!) What is the consequence of this on the developing human brain?
- One of the first challenges we had was figuring out how much Pb to give to human cells to reflect true exposure levels. We dug through the literature for relevant Pb levels in brain and then empirically correlated this with exposure paradigms that resulted in similar tissue levels in human organoids
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View full threadThis wouldn’t have been possible without our amazing collaborators and support (Emory HERCULES, @emorygenetics.bsky.social) and the bold and fearless ambition of @maureenbiologies.bsky.social
- I've been really hoping to see more manuscript threads here on 🦋, so here comes one!!! This is brand new work from the lab that took us in very unexpected directions and to exciting findings led by the amazing @emily-hill.bsky.social. Preprint here www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... and 🧵below:
- We started with a simple question. We know astrocytes form in human cortical organoids (takes awhile, but they do!), but can we induce reactivity in 3D robustly? Answer is yes. See C3 induction here in the setting of inflammatory cytokines. RNAseq shows robust reactive signatures, too!
- So then we wondered whether it mattered how long astrocytes see an inflammatory environment. After all, some neurological injuries are very short-lasting, and others chronic. So, we exposed organoids (already aged to have astrocytes) to very short (1 day) or long (3 months) inflammatory periods.
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View full threadThere's so much more packed into this pre-print, so please check it out as we continue to work on these questions!!!
- Reposted by Steven SloanOur lab's 1st paper, led by @fchrisbennett.bsky.social & @waisenberg.bsky.social. A decade thinking how to directly assess the impact of microglia replacement. Yrs of hard work. This kind of work is needed to expand brain disease care for kids & the vision for safer, more effective cell therapy.
