My research career has seen me live and work in Melbourne, Brisbane, London, and now Hobart.

When I started out in research, new cells being born in the mature brain was a relatively new concept, and one that absolutely fascinated me. It came with the possibility that stem cells within the brain could be activated to replace cells lost due to injury or disease. After discovering that a particular type of stem cell (the OPC) had the ability to make new oligodendrocytes, the cells lost due to MS, it became obvious to me that my research could be applied to develop new and much needed therapies for this disease.

The development of immunomodulatory therapies to reduce relapse rates has been a major advance, but for me, it would have to be the discovery that OPCs exist in our brains, and can make the exact cell type we need to replace to repair the damage caused by MS.

Our project aims to protect brain nerve cells and reduce disability accrual. We will use stem cells to generate the major cell types responsible for controlling brain blood flow. These are pericytes and endothelial cells. As the stem cells are reprogrammed from the blood cells of people with and without MS, they have the same DNA sequence as the donors. That means that the pericytes and endothelial cells can be studied to learn how a person's genes drive changes to these cells, and ultimately the brain's blood vessels.

This will allow us to find out whether a person's genes alter the shape and function of the blood vessel cells and whether this can alter blood flow to the brain, help immune cells invade, promote inflammation, or even impact how MS develops and progresses over time.

Brain blood flow is reduced in people with MS, likely by genetic factors that affect the brain even before clinical symptoms start. This is a problem because blood flow through brain's blood vessels brings oligodendrocytes and nerve cells the oxygen and glucose they need to survive. Blood flow is even more critical after myelin loss, as nerve cell activity goes up, and the nerves need even more oxygen and glucose to survive.

A key goal of this project is to identify how the blood vessels are impacted by genetics. We also expect to identify druggable targets on the blood vessels that can be modified to improve brain blood flow regulation for people with MS. We predict that even after MS develops, targeting and improving blood vessel health could be critical for supporting brain remyelination and preventing nerve cell death.

I enjoy laboratory research. The experiments we carry out are often quite detailed and can run over multiple months. Overcoming the technical challenges to allow an experiment to go ahead can be incredibly frustrating and not knowing until the very end whether an experiment has worked can be stressful. But that is just part of the process. When a student comes to my office and is hopping up and down wanting to show me something they have seen down the microscope, or a team member comes in wanting to share their latest data, I feel a bit of a rush. Those shared successes are my favourite thing about laboratory research.