Monica Carson University of California, Riverside, USA

Dr Monica J. Carson is a Professor of Biomedical Sciences and Director of the Center for Glial-Neuronal Interactions at the University of California at Riverside. She is well known for her work on microglial activation in the nervous system and mechanisms of CNS inflammatory responses. Her laboratory is examining how microglia and T cells cross-regulate microglial activation and T cell effector function by antigen-dependent and -independent mechanisms using transgenic mouse models of CNS inflammation and neurodegeneration. The lab has also profiled a broad array of microglial-expressed genes as a function of age, brain region and health status to define microglial phenotype and function in vivo on a molecular level. From this work they identified multiple subsets of microglia in the healthy unmanipulated CNS. In addition, they find that these phenotypes slowly change during development and as a function of extreme age. The lab is currently examining the roles of these microglial subsets in the healthy and inflamed CNS, contrasting normal murine CNS development with defined pathologies in murine models of CNS autoimmunity and neurodegenerative disease.