6. LOUISA DAL CENGIO
Information acquired: 2025
LOUISA DAL CENGIO is an academic who published a paper in 2018 entitled Altering cortical input unmasks synaptic phenotypes in the YAC128 cortico-striatal co-culture model. LOUISA DAL CENGIO published this work as part of a team: Schmidt, Mandi E. Here is a description of this work: Background: Huntington disease (HD) is a fatal neurodegenerative disorder caused by a CAG expansion in the huntingtin (HTT) gene, leading to selective and progressive neuronal death predominantly in the striatum. Mutant HTT expression causes dysfunctional cortico-striatal (CS) transmission, loss of CS synapses, and striatal medium spiny neuron (MSN) dendritic spine instability prior to neuronal death. Co-culturing cortical and striatal neurons in vitro promotes the formation of functional CS synapses and is a widely used approach to elucidate pathogenic mechanisms of HD and to validate potential synapto-protective therapies. A number of relevant in vivo synaptic phenotypes from the YAC128 HD mouse model, which expresses full-length transgenic human mutant HTT, are recapitulated in CS co-culture by 21 days in vitro (DIV). However, stri.