Repetitive mild traumatic brain injury is linked to a progressive neurodegenerative disorder called chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). CTE has been reported in athletes from a range of sports including rugby, soccer, American football, boxing and ice hockey. CTE neuropathology involves the accumulation of tau protein around blood vessels in the cortical sulci, but we know very little about other brain changes that occur and how they differ from other forms of dementia. In this talk, Dr Murray will introduce her recently funded project which will use multiplexed immunofluorescence to label 50 different antibodies on a single human brain tissue section to investigate the microenvironment of a CTE lesion. To identify the anatomical signature of CTE, this labelling will be also be compared to Alzheimer’s disease and normal aging pathology. Dr Murray is currently establishing the multiplex tissue labelling technique at FMHS and the production of this large, high-content image data presents an opportunity to develop innovative analysis tools for anatomical research. Overall, this project will provide the first comprehensive characterisation of CTE pathology and will identify potential targets to detect and prevent CTE pathology during an athlete's life.

About Dr Helen Murray

Research Fellow, Anatomy and Medical Imaging, University of Auckland and National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke

Helen is a post-doctoral research fellow funded by the Health Education Trust. She works within Professor Maurice Curtis’ Lab in the Department of Anatomy and Medical Imaging. Her post-doctoral research is a collaboration between the Centre for Brain Research in Auckland and the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, USA. Between 2018-2020, she worked across these two institutions to study the earliest changes that occur in Alzheimer’s disease associated with the sense of smell. During this fellowship, she also developed tools for multiplex immunofluorescence labelling and analysis on human brain tissue and established this approach at the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences. Having now returned to New Zealand, Helen is focusing her independent research career toward another of her passions. As a New Zealand representative in ice hockey, she has a keen interest in understanding the neuropathology associated with repetitive sport-related head injury. This new project funded by a Health Education Trust fellowship and an HRC emerging researcher grant will use novel tissue-labelling techniques to study the brains of former athletes donated to the Neurological Foundation Sports Human Brain Bank.

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