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| Dorothy P. Schafer, PhD |
Dorothy P. Schafer, PhD, assistant professor of neurobiology, has been awarded a $2 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to research the role microglia play in the health of the sensory nervous system. This is the first NIH Research Project Grant (RO1) for Dr. Schafer, who has also received funding from the Charles Hood Foundation, the Worcester Foundation, the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation, and the Adelson Medical Research Foundation since she set up her lab at UMass Medical School two years ago.
Schafer studies how the immune and nervous systems communicate to regulate brain function. Using cell-specific molecular genetic approaches, she is particularly focused on how resident macrophages of the brain called microglia respond to changes in sensory experience and neural activity and affect neural circuit connectivity. Abnormalities in neural circuit connectivity and sensory perception as well as microglia are hallmarks of several neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric disorders. Long-term goals of her lab are also aimed at understanding how microglia contribute to this abnormal brain circuitry in these brain disorders.
The new, 5-year RO1 grant will support her basic research to understand the role of microglia in neural circuit connectivity and plasticity. Long term, she will apply these basic neural-immune mechanisms to
uncover novel mechanisms underlying neural circuit defects in people with neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism as well as psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia.
“In disorders such as autism and schizophrenia patient symptoms, particularly hyper or dulled sensitivity to sensory stimuli, could be a consequence of improper microglia function within developing neural circuits,” Schafer said. “In traumatic brain injury or neurodegenerative diseases, you could have the complete dismantling of these neural circuits in your brain and profound inflammation mediated by microglia. So, understanding these basic mechanisms and microglia function within neural circuits could uncover a large number of novel therapeutic targets for inflammatory diseases of the nervous system.”
In addition to the NIH grant, Schafer recently received a 2-year, $550,000 grant from the Adelson Medical Research Foundation to study mechanisms of neurodegenerative disease with a focus on multiple sclerosis.
