Engineering the neuro-immune axis in stem cell-derived brain organoids with Dr Sam Nayler

Sam has a long-standing interest in stem cell biology, neuroscience and DNA damage. Sam has been involved in developing cutting edge models of the brain, using patient-derived stem cells and has worked on models of Down syndrome, Schizophrenia, and several rare cerebellar ataxias.
Sam described the worlds’ first patient-derived iPSCs from patients with Ataxia-Telangiectasia as part of his PhD at the University of Queensland, and followed this up with a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Oxford. Sam utilizes a variety of both ‘wet’ and ‘dry’-lab techniques including stem cell/organoid culture, high-content image analysis and single-cell transcriptomics. Sam is currently exploring these models to give insight into therapeutic targets for neurological disease, with a focus on microglial-neuronal crosstalk and neuroinflammation.