Dr Amy McCaughey-Chapman has been awarded a two-year post-doctoral fellowship by the Catwalk Foundation. Amy is a member of the Neural Reprogramming and Repair Group. She obtained her PhD in 2018 in the field of direct cell reprogramming and has continued her research in this area over the past 18 months establishing protocols to generate lineage-specific neural precursor cells from adult human skin fibroblasts.
One neural cell lineage Amy has focused on is the generation of oligodendrocytes. Oligodendrocytes are cells in the central nervous system that produce a protective, insulating layer called myelin which allows electrical impulses to propagate quickly and efficiently between neurons. Disruption to myelin is involved in devastating spinal cord injuries, for which treatments are limited. Through her Catwalk Fellowship, Amy will be investigating whether human oligodendrocytes can be generated from human skin fibroblasts for applications in disease modelling, drug screening and for cell transplantation to promote remyelination following spinal cord injury.