Welcome to new Principal Investigator Dr Chris Henstridge
Jun 2019: Congratulations to Dr Chris Henstridge, who has taken up a Lectureship position at the University of Dundee and become a Principal Investigator of the Euan MacDonald Centre.
Chris' research focuses on the brain changes that occur in health and disease. Chris is particularly interested in the small connection points between brain cells, called synapses. In diseases such as MND, synapses are one of the earliest structures to break down and when this happens the brain can no longer function properly.
In MND this leads to many problems such as loss of muscle control, but also can cause some people to experience changes in behaviour and thinking skills. By understanding where and why these synapses are lost, Chris hopes to develop new strategies to treat MND.
Chris has been a member of the Euan MacDonald Centre for some time, because he was formerly a post-doctoral researcher in Prof Tara Spires-Jones' lab. Back in 2015 the Centre awarded Chris some funds, generated by the Ice Bucket Challenge, to undertake a small study. Because the findings of this study were interesting, Chris was then able to obtain a research grant from MND Scotland. In turn this led to an important scientific publication and his current success in being awarded a Lectureship in Dundee.
Chris studied pharmacology at the University of Glasgow, before doing his PhD in neuropharmacology at the University of Dundee. He then spent 4 years in Hungary’s capital, Budapest, studying changes in synapses in models of autism before joining the University of Edinburgh in 2014.
Related links
News article describing Chris' findings: Synapse loss may underlie brain changes in MND' (Dec 2017)