image: Dr Michael-John Dolan in Trinity College Dublin.
Credit: Trinity College Dublin
Dr Michael-John Dolan has won a highly prestigious European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grants to pursue research aimed at uncovering the secrets of brain disorders and repair.
Dr Dolan’s project: MICRODISSECT: Dissection of Microglial State Biology in Brain Repair
Dr Dolan’s research will focus on microglia, the brain's resident immune cells, which can form distinct subtypes, or “states” – especially during brain damage, disease, or repair. While microglia are crucial for regulating neuroinflammation and brain repair, these states are poorly understood at present.
This project will fill this gap by using cutting-edge molecular and genomic tools to create a detailed map of how these states change over time. Building on this, the team will investigate the emergence and function of a microglial subtype that interacts with the peripheral immune system, and finally, develop methods to control and inactivate any microglial state to reveal the neurobiological function of these poorly understood subtypes.
The team will focus on brain repair as a model system, with the ultimate goal of harnessing microglial states to rejuvenate and arrest neuropathology. Because microglia have been implicated in many neurological and neurodevelopmental disorders including Alzheimer’s disease and Multiple Sclerosis, the datasets, tools and insights will be broadly applicable to the study of brain disorders.
Dr Dolan, Assistant Professor in Trinity’s School of Genetics and Microbiology, said: “I am thrilled to be an ERC awardee and grateful to all my mentors and trainees for their support, in addition to Trinity’s fantastic Research Development Office. This award comes at a pivotal time for me, having just moved back to Ireland to start my group. This ERC grant will be the platform on which my lab will build and enable us to strike out in an ambitious new direction in neuroimmunology.”
ERC Starting Grants draw funding from the EU’s Horizon Europe programme to enable excellent scientists, with up to seven years of post-PhD experience, to pursue their most promising ideas. The funds also enable recipients to significantly grow their research teams over the five-year duration of the projects they support.