Dr Samantha Barton is an NHMRC-ARC Dementia Research Development Fellow working in the Motor Neurone Disease Laboratory at the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health.

Dr Barton completed her PhD in 2015 at Monash University studying white matter damage in a model of preterm birth. Her keen interest in neurobiology prompted her to spend the first two years of her fellowship at the University of Edinburgh with Prof Siddharthan Chandran learning cutting-edge techniques in the handling on patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells allowing her to delve more in-depth into the underlying pathomechanisms of white matter dysfunction.

Dr Barton's fellowship has focussed on the motor neurone diseases, more specifically amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and frontotemperal dementia, and her research goals are to understand the role of non-neuronal cells like oligodendrocytes (the major cell type of the white matter) in motor neurone disease. She uses human iPSC from patients with motor neuron disease and differentiates them into oligodendrocytes to allow phenotypic and functional analysis, comparing to iPSC-derived oligodendrocytes from otherwise healthy control patients. She also utilises mouse models and human post-mortem tissue to validate her findings.

Key collaborators

Prof Siddharthan Chandran, University of Edinburgh, UK

Prof Colin Smith, University of Edinburgh, UK

Dr Bhuvaneish Selvaraj, University of Edinburgh, UK

Dr Jenna Gregory, University of Edinburgh, UK