Aaron Burberry, PhD

Assistant Professor
Department of Pathology
School of Medicine
Member
Immune Oncology Program
Case Comprehensive Cancer Center

Aaron Burberry earned his doctoral degree from the University of Michigan working with Gabriel Nunez to understand host-microbial interactions in Crohn’s disease and hematopoietic stem cell response to infection. For post-doctoral studies, Aaron trained with Kevin Eggan at Harvard University where became interested in studying how a common inherited mutation causes neural degeneration in Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and Frontotemporal dementia (FTD). He and his colleagues discovered that this gene acts in the immune system including macrophages and T cells to restrict neural inflammation and autoimmunity in response to gut bacteria. Aaron received a K99/R00 Pathway to Independence award from the National Institute of Aging and joined the faculty at Case Western Reserve University in 2021 as Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology where he continues to explore genetic and environmental contributions to neural inflammation. To accomplish this, the Burberry group applies cutting-edge techniques such as single cell RNA sequencing, mass cytometry, and bacterial metatranscriptomics along with our innovative germ-free C9orf72 loss of function mice and human induced pluripotent stem cell derived models of microglia and motor neurons.

 

Teaching Information

Teaching Interests

Neurodegenerative Disease

Research Information

Research Interests

Neurodegenerative disease, microbiome, immunity, stem cell biology

Research Projects

The Burberry group is broadly interested in understanding how the immune system interacts with the nervous system and our environment to support neuronal homeostasis. In the past decade, genome wide association studies involving thousands of cases and controls and next generation sequencing studies of afflicted families have drastically expanded our knowledge of common genomic polymorphisms and rare mutations that confer risk to neurodegeneration. Intriguingly, many genes whose variation modifies neurological disease risk are enriched in cells of the immune system, including microglia. While our efforts have shed light on an important role for the microbiome in shaping an individual’s propensity of developing ALS/FTD, the precise inputs through which the environment stimulates the immune system to change brain health remain poorly understood. Our goal is to uncover the circuits, cell types and pathways in which these disease-associated perturbations function with the hope that with time, our discoveries will ultimately be leveraged to improve patient care.   

Recent Funding

NIH/NIA R00

Publications

C9ORF72 Suppresses Systemic and Neural Inflammation Induced by Gut Bacteria, Nature, 2020

View Publications

Education

PhD
Molecular and Cellular Pathology
University of Michigan
2013