Research Interests and Techniques

The lab's research focuses on ischemic injury of the brain, in particular the neonatal/developing brain. Ischemia is the term given to a loss of blood supply and can arise due to obstruction of a blood vessel (leading to a stroke), or from factors that are currently not well understood but which produce the brain injury that underlies cerebral palsy.

Strokes are the third most common killer in the USA (after cancer and heart disease) and can afflict both adults and infants. Stroke in newborns (fetal/neonatal stroke) is surprisingly common with some estimates suggesting it is more common in this age group than in adults over the age of 65.

Cerebral palsy, a separate disorder from stroke, is the most common of all human birth disorders, affecting about two out of a thousand live births in the USA. The prevalence of cerebral palsy is far greater in third world countries. Cerebral palsy is especially common in babies that are born prematurely. Improvements in neonatal intensive care has lead to a significant increase in the number of these infants at risk for cerebral palsy.

The Fern lab uses novel cell physiological techniques to investigate the events that lead from a loss of the brain's blood supply to the onset of permanent brain damage. These techniques have been developed specifically to study the neonatal/fetal brain. They allow us to study intracellular ionic events that occur when brain cells lose their oxygen and glucose supply. These ionic events are seminal to the wide-spread cell death that occurs subsequent to ischemia in the developing brain.

Our long-term goals are to investigate the mechanisms that underlie ischemic brain injury, in particular in the developing brain, so that such events can eventually be prevented.

Research Group and Funding

Present Group Members

Badrah Alghamdi

Narisimha Beeraka

Tahani Huria

Melissa Trotman

Mr Philipp Vermehren

Current Funding

NIH Grant, 2002, 'Ischemic Injury of Glia'

Recent Publications

Fern R, Moeller T. Rapid ischemic cell death in immature oligodendrocytes: a fatal glutamate release feedback loop. Journal of Neuroscience. 20(1): 34-42, 2000. Online

Brown AM, Fern R, Jarvinen JP, Kaila K, Ransom BR. Changes in [Ca2]0 during anoxia in CNS white matter. Neuroreport. 9(9): 1997-2000, Jun 1998

Fern R, Davis P, Waxman SG, Ransom BR. Axon conduction and survival in CNS white matter during energy deprivation: a developmental study. Journal of Neurophysiology. 79(1): 95-105, Jan 1998. Online

Fern R. Intracellular calcium and cell death during ischemia in neonatal rat white matter astrocytes in situ. Journal of Neuroscience. 18(18): 7232-43, 1998. Online