That it is an important area of research and one that I thought I would be able to make a substantial positive impact in with the skill set I have developed over the first three years of my research career.

Some of the early-stage clinical research using clemastine or low intensity repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation to promote remyelination in people living with multiple sclerosis (MS).

My research project aims to identify important cellular signalling pathways in myelination. I have performed pharmacological experiments and identified drugs which activate distinct signalling pathways in oligodendrocyte precursor cells, the cells which are responsible for myelination and remyelination in the central nervous system (CNS). I'm now using these drugs as tool compounds to try and better understand the relative contribution of different signalling pathways to cellular differentiation in MS, using cells isolated from mice or derived from human-induced-pluripotent stem cells.

This research will help in the rational design of small molecule drugs that can help to promote remyelination in MS.

It's often a fun workspace. It is really rewarding and exciting when experiments are going well and you see things coming together. The obvious challenge is frustration that comes when experiments don't work and result in you losing significant amounts of time.