Dr Cara Croft, PhD in Neuroscience

Profile

After obtaining her PhD in Neuroscience from King’s College London in 2016, Dr Cara Croft joined the University of Florida for her postdoctoral training and Brightfocus Foundation postdoctoral fellowship, where she was also awarded the McKnight Leadership Award in 2020 for contributions to neuroscience research, education and outreach. 

With a prestigious Race Against Dementia fellowship, she relocated to the UK Dementia Research Institute at University College London as an Emerging leader in 2021 and joined the Blizard Institute as a Senior Lecturer in Neuroscience in September 2023. Cara also remains a Co-Investigator within the UK Dementia Research Institute.

Dr Croft’s research aims to understand the causes and consequences of signature disease pathologies and neurodegeneration in dementia, and whether these processes can be targeted by new treatments.

Teaching

Neuroscience and Translational Medicine MSc
Lecturer (Neurodegenerative Diseases)
Laboratory-based Project Supervisor

Medicine MBBS
Problem Based Learning Facilitator Year 1

PhD opportunities
We are always happy to discuss hosting PhD students, please enquire if you have already secured funding. Other PhD opportunities will be advertised through QMUL.

Research

Research Interests:

My research group is focused on understanding different aspects of dementia – specifically Alz-heimer’s and Parkinson’s disease as proteinopathies. We are interested in the causes and consequences of protein aggregation and neuropathology in these diseases and how genetic risk factors influence this. We hope greater understanding of these processes may provide novel targets to treat these diseases in the clinic. We currently use various in vitro and in vivo models of proteinopathy, AAV technologies, biochemistry, live imaging and ‘omics approaches to address these topics.

Publications

Croft, C.L*., Paterno, G., Vause AR., Rowe LA., Ryu DH., et al. (2022) Optical pulse labeling studies reveal exogenous seeding slows α-synuclein clearance. NPJ Parkinsons Dis. 2022 Dec 19;8(1):173. doi: 10.1038/s41531-022-00434-4.
*co-corresponding author

Croft, C.L., Goodwin, M.S., Ryu, D.H., Lessard, C.B., Tejeda, G., et al., (2021). Photodynamic studies reveal rapid for-mation and appreciable turnover of tau inclusions. Acta Neuropathologica, doi:10.1007/s00401-021-02264-9

Goodwin, M.S., Croft, C.L., Futch, H.S., Ryu, D., Ceballos-Diaz, C., et al.. (2020). Utilizing minimally purified secreted rAAV for rapid and cost-effective manipulation of gene expression in the CNS. Molecular Neurodegeneration, 15 (1), doi:10.1186/s13024-020-00361-z

Croft, C.L., Cruz, P.E., Ryu, D.H., Ceballos-Diaz, C., Strang, K.H., et al. (2019). rAAV-based brain slice culture models of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease inclusion pathologies. JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL MEDICINE, 216 (3), 539-555. doi:10.1084/jem.20182184

Strang, K.H., Croft, C.L., Sorrentino, Z.A., Chakrabarty, P., Golde, T.E., Giasson, B.I. (2018). Distinct differences in prion-like seeding and aggregation between Tau protein variants provide mechanistic insights into tauopathies. JOURNAL OF BIOLOGICAL CHEMISTRY, 293 (7), 2408-2421. doi:10.1074/jbc.M117.815357

Pubmed:  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/myncbi/16shisUZEucAo/bibliography/public/

Supervision

Subsidiary Supervision

• Becky Csondor (Rosalind Franklin Institute/University College London)
• Fuuko Kammuri (University College London)
• Danilo Negro (University of Edinburgh)