Alexander Liu
Program: Immunology
Current advisor: Rotating in the lab of Rajendra S. Apte, MD, PhD
Undergraduate university: Case Western Reserve University
Research summary
This summer, I rotated in Dr. Rajendra Apte’s lab to investigate mechanisms of inflammation and retinal degeneration. My rotation research focuses in two major areas:
1) Microglial change in the setting of diabetic retinal degeneration
I performed in-vitro phagocytic assay to show that high glucose treated microglia demonstrated higher level of phagocytic function as well as inflammation. In addition, CD200 treatment attenuates this high-glucose driven microglia inflammation, which suggests a CD200 mediated microglia-amacrine interaction in diabetic retinopathy.
2) NAD metabolism induced cell state change
I cultured bone marrow derived macrophage from mice model previously generated in lab for ATAC and RNA sequencing. I also used the same cell line for in-vitro assay to show that metabolic alteration of NAD level can induce cholesterol-mediated macrophage senescence and inflammation, which confirms findings by previous lab members.
Graduate publications