Dr. Meucci has been selected by The National Institute on Drug Abuse for a Method to Extend Research in Time (MERIT) award for the research grant: Role of chemokines in neuronal function and survival. The NIH MERIT program comprises an initial MERIT award and the opportunity for a five-year MERIT award extension, totaling up to […]
Congratulations to Lindsay Festa for successfully defending her PhD thesis titled: Defining the molecular pathways involved in CXCL12-mediated rescue of dendritic spines and cognitive deficits in an animal model of neuroHIV. The quality and impact of Lindsay’s work has been recognized both locally and internationally, as evidenced by three publications in high profile peer-reviewed journals, […]
The Institute of Advanced Studies has invited Dr. Meucci to spend a six-week fellowship on campus in an effort to foster international collaboration and global educational initiatives. During her stay, she also presented a seminar entitled: “Three Key Questions on NeuroHIV: What is it? Why Should We Care? Can We Do Something?”
The award is given for first place in the platform presentation competition at Drexel’s Discovery Day. Lindsay’s talk was titled: The chemokine CXCL12 restores dendritic spine loss and cognitive deficits in a rodent model of HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders.
Dr. Meucci will hold the position for a two-year term, from 2018 – 2020.
The award is given in recognition of extraordinary service in facilitating the operations of society initiatives. Dr. Meucci served as the chair of the Local Organizing and Scientific Committee during the 23rd annual SNIP conference in Philadelphia, PA.
Our research aims to characterize the physiological and pathological actions of chemokines in the central nervous system (CNS) in order to foster the development of new therapeutic approaches against neuroinflammatory and neurodegenerative disorders, including neuroAIDS.
We examine the effects of chemokines and viral proteins using different methods including traditional biochemical/molecular biology techniques and novel imaging and proteomics approaches, as briefly described below. Primary cultures of rat and human central neurons are used as a model for the study of chemokine receptors naturally expressed by neurons. Alternative models include neuronal human cell lines expressing specific chemokine receptors. In addition, small animal models and post-mortem brain tissue samples from control and HIV-infected individuals are used for the analyses of specific pathways of interest in vivo/ex vivo.
2016 Pharmacology and Physiology Department Retreat – May 9th-10th, 2016