DrAnna Mallach

My work focusses on understanding the role of cellular interactions in contributing to neurodegenerative diseases.

I graduated with a BSc in Neuroscience from King's College London before joining Imperial College for an MRes in Experimental Neuroscience, where I worked on different projects related to neurodegenerative diseases across different labs. Following my interest in investigating cellular interactions, I undertook a PhD at the Queen Square Institute of Neurology at UCL. Here I investigated the effect of TREM2 mutations on microglia - neuronal communication, with a particular focus on secreted extracellular vesicles. Using induced pluripotent stem cells to model various cell types, I showed that extracellular vesicles form an important part of this intercellular communication and can support the normal functioning of neurons.

I joined the UK Dementia Research Institute at UCL in 2021 as a post-doc in the De Strooper/ Arancibia lab, where I used state-of-the-art spatial transcriptomic techniques to resolve cell-cell communication in Alzheimer's disease. Through testing different techniques, before they were commercially available, I contributed to the establishment of the Single Cell and Spatial Omics Platform and collaborated with a wide range of companies and scientists. Using spatial transcriptomics, I found disrupted microglia - astrocyte communication specifically around pathology in Alzheimer's disease.

In July 2024, I started the internationally competitive Edmond and Lily Safra Research Fellowship at Imperial, where I further investigate the importance of intercellular communication in Parkinson's disease. I also became a UK Dementia Research Institute Emerging Leader. My lab uses a combination of wet-lab experiments and bioinformatic analyses to understand how glia cells of the brain contribute to Neurodegeneration.