Summary
I am a neuroscientist specialized in cellular and molecular neurobiology of neurodegenerative diseases. I am passionate about neuroscience, obsessive microscopist and out of the box thinker. I am looking for a new home to perform groundbreaking research in an environment that fosters ingenuity and creativity.
Experienced biomedical researcher in Switzerland.
• 10+ years experience in mechanistic Neurobiology, Cellular and Molecular Biology research and research-team coordination, project management, establishing collaborations, supervision and mentoring.
• Extensive knowledge in Neuroscience, synaptic physiology and pathologies and neurodegenerative diseases and passionate about improving the lives of patients
• Expert in animal model for brain disease, development of new models, behavioral testing and analysis, animal colony management, experienced with Drosophila and C.Elegans.
• Expert in advanced imaging and microscopy techniques (high-resolution live-cell imaging, confocal microscopy, electron microscopy, CLEM, STED, SIM, STORM), processing and analyses, with experience in developing custom pipeline of analysis.
• Expert in cellular and tissue processing for imaging, biochemistry and OMICs
• Excellent track records of achievements in the field of neurodegeneration documented by the publication of research articles and reviews in high impact journals and acquiring multiple rounds of competitive international funding.
• Effective communicator and experienced science writer.
• Excellent leadership and team player
During my Ph.D., I studied the regulation of synaptic plasticity and synaptogenesis by VEGF, a vascular growth factor, and its consequences on learning and memory. I demonstrated that VEGF/VEGFR2 regulates NMDAR and AMPAR synaptic localization and increases the number of synaptic sites when coupled with synaptic activity. Moreover, I found that VEGF/VEGFR2 signaling at the synapse can trigger specific pathways implicated in learning and memory, and that the deletion of VEGFR2 in animal models decreased learning capacities (De Rossi et al, 2016). After my Ph.D., I spent 6 months studying the effects of autoantibodies, implicated in limbic encephalitis, on the synaptic homeostasis and signaling pathway regulation. I studied the effects of NMDAR antibodies on hippocampal functions (Mikasova et al, 2012) and mGluR1 antibodies role in cerebellar ataxia.
In 2014, I joined Prof. Gopal Thinakaran's lab at the University of Chicago to perform research in the cellular biology of Alzheimer disease. My project focused on BIN1, a recently identified gene as a major genetic risk factor for late-onset Alzheimer’s disease. It was important to first characterize BIN1 expression and localization pattern in the brain, as comprehensive studies were lacking on the subject (De Rossi et al, 2016, De Rossi et al, 2017). Next, I aimed to investigate a unique profile of BIN1 aggregation within the amyloid deposits in several mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease (De Rossi et al, 2018, Andrew et al, 2019). My work used complementary approaches of cellular biology (cell culture, transfection, trafficking and microscopy), molecular biology (plasmid design for in vitro interaction binding experiment and antibodies development) and animal models (behavior, IHC, IHF and biochemistry). Over the years, I have acquired experience in different microscopy techniques including STORM microscopy, 3D STED and confocal microscopy and I have experience in electron microscopy analyses. My last project uncovered the presynaptic localization of BIN1 at excitatory synapses and highlighted a new role for BIN1 in presynaptic release of glutamate and learning and memory (De Rossi et al, 2020). Before leaving the University of Chicago, I was finalizing a study demonstrating a role for BIN1 in the regulation of oligodendrocytes cytoskeleton organization and oligodendrocytes maturation (on-going studies in the Thinakaran lab). I was funded by the Alzheimer’s Association and the Brightfocus Foundation to explore the role of BIN1 in the seeding and propagation of Tau pathology in the brain (on-going studies in the Thinakaran lab).
In December 2018, I joined the Department of Quantitative BioMedicine (DQBM) at the University of Zurich (UZH). My work demonstrated for the first time the seeding properties of TDP-43 (De Rossi, Lewis et al, 2021) using advanced imaging technique including CLEM and dSTORM. Other projects demonstrated the role of FUS at the synapses and its important for GABAergic neurons (Sahadevan, Hembach et al, 2021, Scekic-Zahirovic, Sanjuan-Ruiz 2021) and the role of liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS) in physiology and in pathology (Zbinden, Perez-Berlanga et al, 2020). I am currently focusing on understanding the physiological roles of TDP-43 C-terminal phosphorylation, which were until now considered pathological. I am exploring the regulation of phosphoTDP-43 at the synapses, by synaptic activity and understand how these specifics post translational modifications regulate TDP-43 functions in the cell. My work uses mainly dSTORM super resolution microscopy as the main tool to explore these questions.
