Draft:Melissa E. Murray (neuropathologist)


Introduction

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Melissa E. Murray is an American translational neuropathologist and Professor of Neuroscience at Mayo Clinic Florida.

Early life and education

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Murray was born in Florida and raised in both Florida and Pennsylvania. She received her Bachelor of Science in Biology with University Honors from the University of North Florida. She completed her Ph.D. at Mayo Clinic College of Medicine in 2010, where she studied the age effects on white matter through an integration of neuropathology, neuroimaging, and behavioral neurology. Murray’s dissertation examined the aging brain outside the context of neurodegeneration.

Career

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After completing her Ph.D., Murray began her postdoctoral fellowship at Mayo Clinic with a focus on neuropathology, neuroimaging, and genetics. She was promoted to Assistant Professor of Neuroscience in 2013.

Murray’s research has utilized digital pathology to quantify disease severity and brain health in Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. As an early adopter of the technology, she worked to develop and advance the use of digital pathology as a tool for clinicopathologic research. She has used this technique to uncover distinct patterns in the topographic distribution of neuropathologic lesions underlying clinical heterogeneity[1]

Research

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She specializes in the study of neurodegeneration, particularly relating to Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias with an emphasis on young-onset Alzheimer’s disease. Her expertise in digital pathology and discovery of neuropathologic subtypes of Alzheimer’s disease has made her a pioneer in the field of neurodegenerative research.

Murray’s research has made significant contributions to the field of Alzheimer’s disease. One of her most notable papers includes a landmark study published in The Lancet Neurology (2011)[2], where she designed an algorithm to subtype Alzheimer’s disease based on topographic distribution of tangles, leading to the uncovering of neuropathologic influence on syndromic heterogeneity. This study demonstrates Murray’s ongoing influence on an entire field dedicated to the study of atypical (non-amnestic) Alzheimer’s disease.

In another study published in Brain: A Journal of Neurology (2015)[3], Murray demonstrated how research-based clinical cutpoints of amyloid-PET imaging corresponded to underlying neuropathology. This study cemented Murray’s distinct research niche that utilizes a quantitative approach to uncover neuropathologic underpinnings of biomarker changes. The paper also underscored the contribution of tangle pathology over amyloid-β pathology to cognitive decline.

To further the field’s understanding of hippocampal vulnerability in Alzheimer’s disease, Dr. Murray’s team published a study in in Nature Communications (2021)[4], where they utilized digital pathology as a deep phenotyping approach to reveal novel protein-coding genes implicated in selective vulnerability observed in Alzheimer’s disease. This study highlights her team’s commitment to a holistic approach to understanding Alzheimer’s disease that encompasses both life science and applied sciences in her collaborative effort to bring machine learning approaches to aid in gene prioritization efforts.

Finally, the paper "Global neuropathologic severity of Alzheimer’s disease and locus coeruleus vulnerability influences plasma phosphorylated tau levels" published in the journal Molecular Neurodegeneration in 2022[5], explores the relationship between plasma phosphorylated tau (p-tau) levels and Alzheimer's disease biomarker changes. The study found that global neuropathologic scales of tau and amyloid-β, as well as the vulnerability of the locus coeruleus, were associated with plasma p-tau levels. The paper theorized that higher soluble plasma p-tau levels may be the result of an intersection between insoluble deposits of amyloid-β and tau accumulation in the brain and may be associated with locus coeruleus degeneration.

Honors and awards

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Murray has received several honors and awards throughout her career. In 2012, she was awarded the Robert Terry Award for Best Paper in Neurodegenerative Diseases by the American Association of Neuropathologists for her work on identifying genetic determinants of glial tau pathology in Progressive Supranuclear Palsy. The following year, Murray was also awarded the Jacksonville Business Journal Health Care Hero award.

That same year, she was awarded the International Franz Nissl Young Investigator in Neuropathology by the International Society of Neuropathology, as well as the Jacksonville Business Journal's "40 under 40" award. In 2016, Murray received the Alzheimer's Association de Leon Prize in Neuroimaging award and was named New Investigator of 2016. She was also recognized as one of "The Power List" by The Pathologist. In 2020, Murray was named a recipient of Clarivate's Web of Science Highly Cited Researcher designation. Most recently, she was awarded the Mayo Clinic Florida Investigator of the Year in 2022.

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References

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  1. ^ "TRANSLATIONAL NEUROPATHOLOGY: MELISSA E. MURRAY".
  2. ^ Murray, Melissa E; Graff-Radford, Neill R; Ross, Owen A; Petersen, Ronald C; Duara, Ranjan; Dickson, Dennis W (September 2011). "Neuropathologically defined subtypes of Alzheimer's disease with distinct clinical characteristics: a retrospective study". The Lancet Neurology. 10 (9): 785–796. doi:10.1016/S1474-4422(11)70156-9. PMC 3175379. PMID 21802369.
  3. ^ Murray, Melissa E.; Lowe, Val J.; Graff-Radford, Neill R.; Liesinger, Amanda M.; Cannon, Ashley; Przybelski, Scott A.; Rawal, Bhupendra; Parisi, Joseph E.; Petersen, Ronald C.; Kantarci, Kejal; Ross, Owen A.; Duara, Ranjan; Knopman, David S.; Jack, Clifford R.; Dickson, Dennis W. (May 2015). "Clinicopathologic and 11 C-Pittsburgh compound B implications of Thal amyloid phase across the Alzheimer's disease spectrum". Brain. 138 (5): 1370–1381. doi:10.1093/brain/awv050. ISSN 0006-8950. PMID 25805643.
  4. ^ Crist, Angela M.; Hinkle, Kelly M.; Wang, Xue; Moloney, Christina M.; Matchett, Billie J.; Labuzan, Sydney A.; Frankenhauser, Isabelle; Azu, Nkem O.; Liesinger, Amanda M.; Lesser, Elizabeth R.; Serie, Daniel J.; Quicksall, Zachary S.; Patel, Tulsi A.; Carnwath, Troy P.; DeTure, Michael (2021-04-19). "Transcriptomic analysis to identify genes associated with selective hippocampal vulnerability in Alzheimer's disease". Nature Communications. 12 (1): 2311. Bibcode:2021NatCo..12.2311C. doi:10.1038/s41467-021-22399-3. ISSN 2041-1723. PMC 8055900. PMID 33875655.
  5. ^ Murray, Melissa E.; Moloney, Christina M.; Kouri, Naomi; Syrjanen, Jeremy A.; Matchett, Billie J.; Rothberg, Darren M.; Tranovich, Jessica F.; Sirmans, Tiffany N. Hicks; Wiste, Heather J.; Boon, Baayla D. C.; Nguyen, Aivi T.; Reichard, R. Ross; Dickson, Dennis W.; Lowe, Val J.; Dage, Jeffrey L. (2022-12-27). "Global neuropathologic severity of Alzheimer's disease and locus coeruleus vulnerability influences plasma phosphorylated tau levels". Molecular Neurodegeneration. 17 (1): 85. doi:10.1186/s13024-022-00578-0. ISSN 1750-1326. PMC 9795667. PMID 36575455.