Affiliation: Emory University

Dr. Claudia Espinosa-Garcia is an Instructor of Pharmacology at Emory University. She received her BS and MS degrees in Experimental Biology from Metropolitan Autonomous University in Mexico. She earned her PhD degree in Biomedical Sciences from the National Autonomous University of Mexico working in the laboratory of Dr. Gabriela Morali, where she evaluated the neuroprotective effects of progesterone on reducing neuronal death and neurite growth inhibitors in a rodent model of cerebral ischemia. For her postdoctoral training, she joined the laboratory of Dr. Donald Stein in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Emory University. There, she continued to build on her previous training by moving into the study of stroke with inflammation-related comorbidities, particularly stress. Her postdoctoral research, funded by the American Heart Association, investigated how chronic stress shifts microglia to a highly pro-inflammatory phenotype following ischemia and evaluated the efficacy of progesterone in alleviating the deleterious effects of chronic stress on the microglial inflammatory response. Recently, she transitioned to the Department of Pharmacology and the laboratory of Dr. Raymond Dingledine. Her research focuses on the molecular mechanisms underlying immune responses in inflammation-related disorders, with the long-term goal of developing better therapeutics to treat neurological and psychiatric diseases with a neuroinflammatory component. Her current research, funded by the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation, examines the impact of chronic stress on microglial autophagy, the self-cleaning process within a cell that helps to remove damaged cell components and harmful agents that exacerbate brain inflammation associated with depressive-like behavior.