Fitz Lab

Research focus

NIH R01 · 2025

Neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative effects of environmental determinants: altering neural cellular populations impacting homeostatic functions and inflammatory response.

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common form of dementia, influenced by genetic, environmental and lifestyle factors. Environmental factors and gene-environment interactions are poorly understood in AD etiology. Recently the role of glia in Alzheimer’s disease has gained focus, fueled by GWAS discovery of several risk loci in genes related to immune function, and neuronal-glial cell interactions which are essential for synaptic homeostasis and affected in AD. Furthermore, exposure to environmental toxicants such as heavy metals, as well as metalloids, induce epigenetic changes which could alter different neural cell populations accelerating neurodegeneration. To improve our…

From the public funding record at NIH RePORTER. Describes the funded project, not the reviews below.