Olivia F Monteiro

Biography

Olivia graduated from the University of Aberdeen with an Honours degree in Biomedical Science. Olivia completed her PhD in the University of Edinburgh, focusing on the mechanisms of peptide release from neuronal dendrites.  After her PhD, Olivia moved in to the field of developmental biology to study FGF signalling in mesoderm cells during mesoderm migration and subsequent differentiation in Dr Arno Muller’s lab in the College of Life Sciences in the University of Dundee. In 2012 Olivia joined a project supervised by Prof. Lambert and Dr. Langston to investigate the effects of compounds designed to slow the progression of Huntington’s disease. This project is led by Prof. Schweiger (Dundee & Mainz).

Research Interest

Huntington’s disease (HD) is an autosomal dominant neurodegenerative disorder caused by a mutation in exon 1 of the huntingtin gene resulting in an increased number of CAG repeats (>36), leading to aberrant huntingtin protein production and aggregation. HD is traditionally characterised and diagnosed by movement disturbances, however cognitive abnormalities often present prior to locomotor dysfunction and may occur, in part, through changes within the hippocampus [Lynch et al. (2007)]. The aim of this project is to develop in vitro cell and in vivo based assays for identifying effective candidate compounds for the treatment of HD.