Sara Gombash Lampe

I currently work as a postdoctoral researcher at the Ohio State University.

My current training focuses on multiple sclerosis. I am examining the role Vitamin D plays in MS onset. The lab I am working in wants to know if you have low vitamin D levels when your a child, does that increase your risk for getting MS as an adult? MS has a lower incidence near the equator where there is more sunshine and MS patients are generally vitamin D deficient. We believe that vitamin D might have a protective role on neurons, therefore might ward off MS.

During my first postdoc, my project focused on dysfunction of the enteric nervous system (in the gut) in patients with Spinal Muscular Atrophy. SMA is a genetic disorder in which mutation of the survival of motor neuron 1 gene causes loss of lower motor neurons in the spinal cord resulting in muscle weakness and atrophy. The most severe forms of SMA occur in very young children, while less severe forms can occur in adults. Severe SMA is fatal, and SMA is the most common genetic cause of death in infancy. SMA patients experience debilitating gastrointestinal symptoms; I am investigating whether the loss of SMN1 contributes to these symptoms, and whether gene expression in enteric neurons can reveal something about the death of motor neurons in the spinal cord for novel therapy development.

I received my Ph.D. from the University of Cincinnati in March of 2013. In my dissertation research, I examined the potential of the neurotrophic factor Pleiotrophin to provide neurorestoration in both the 6-hydroxydopamine neurotoxin and alpha-synuclein overexpressing rodent models of PD, testing the hypothesis that viral vector-mediated overexpression of Pleiotrophin in the adult rat nigrostriatal system can facilitate long-term functional recovery in multiple rat models of parkinsonism. Additionally, I characterized sensory-motor behavioral deficits and extent of nigrostriatal damage in young and aged rats overexpressing human wild type alpha-synuclein via recombinant adeno-associated viral vectors designed in our laboratory.

I earned my B.S. in Neuroscience and Biology at Baldwin-Wallace College. My work there consisted of investigating how the GABAA agonist muscimol influences conditioned taste aversion extinction. While attending Baldwin-Wallace I completed my undergraduate thesis studies of modifications in patterns of GABA immunoreactive cells in the somatosensory cortex following limb amputation at the University of Toledo College o