Report of research internship within the NAWA Ster program – Beata Filipek, MD, PhD student of International Doctoral School at Medical University of Lodz

 

Since May 2023 I have been participating in a research internship in the USA within the STER program entitled Internationalization empowerment of Doctoral School at Medical University of Lodz (InterEmpowereD)” financed by the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange.

The supervisors of my doctoral dissertation are prof. dr hab. n. biol. Tomasz Popławski from the Department of Microbiology and Pharmaceutical Biochemistry Medical University of Lodz and Professor Kevin O’Connor from Yale University School of Medicine, USA.

In the laboratory of Professor Kevin O’Connor Department of Neurology Yale University School of Medicine, I am implementing a research project aimed at studying pathomechanisms associated with the occurrence of demyelinating diseases: myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein antibody disease (MOGAD) and neuromyelitis optica (NMO). I am testing and characterizing autoantibodies in patients’ serum using advanced molecular biology techniques.

The effect of my current scientific cooperation with mentioned above research center is a publication “MOGAD patient autoantibodies induce complement, phagocytosis, and cellular cytotoxicity” JCI insight IF 9,496.