Martin Badov
Martin Badov is a second year undergraduate student who, with the help of his mentor Adithya Gopinath, helps investigate the relationship between the peripheral immune system and central nervous system in Parkinson’s Disease.
Research: Under the guidance of my mentor, I carry out flow cytometry experiments to study dopamine activity in monocytes. This tool allows us to see how the immune systems of Parkinson’s Disease patients drastically differs from that of healthy individuals. We carry out similar experiments in mouse models of this disease which allow us to further investigate this phenomena. In addition to this, I am replicating our ELISA protocol to measure precise quantities of tyrosine hydroxylase in white blood cells. I hope to help refine these experiments so that they can potentially be used as diagnostic tools for Parkinson’s Disease as well as other neurodegenerative disorders.