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Melissa J. McGinn, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
B.A., Art History, The College of William and Mary (1998)
Ph.D., Anatomy and Neurobiology, Virginia Commonwealth University (2005)
Postdoctoral training, Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, Virginia Commonwealth University
| Office Address: | | Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology |
| | | Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Campus |
| | | Box 980629 |
| | | Richmond, VA 23298-0709 |
| Office Phone: | | (804) 827-0009 |
| FAX: | | (804) 828-9477 |
| e-mail: | | mjmcginn@vcu.edu |
RESEARCH AND SCHOLARLY INTERESTS
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a national healthcare problem extracting a terribly personal and societal toll. My research focuses on obtaining a better understanding of the pathological events that follow traumatic brain injury as well as investigating endogenous repair mechanisms that occur in the brain in response to insult. We employ several experimental animal models of traumatic brain injury and utilize anatomical, functional and behavioral endpoints to investigate the processes that are operant in the brain following a traumatic insult. Of particular interest are traumatically induced axonal and synaptic change in the injured brain and the structural and functional consequences of such changes following TBI. We are currently investigating the calpain-mediated proteolytic degradation of several key axonal and synaptic proteins following diffuse brain injury in an effort to establish the effects of this proteolysis on injury-induced axonal and synaptic change. Related studies have focused on establishing the potential utility of these proteolytic cleavage products as surrogate biomarkers of traumatic brain injury. In addition to investigating the pathological response of the brain to trauma, we also seek to obtain a better understanding of the endogenous repair mechanisms at work in the injured brain. Ongoing investigations have focused on the neurogenic response of the brain to insult and have begun assess the extent to which endogenous neural stem/progenitor cell populations may play reparative roles in the injured brain.
REPRESENTATIVE PUBLICATIONS
MJ McGinn, D Sun, SL Schneider, JK Alexander, RJ Colello. Epidermal growth factor- induced cell proliferation in the
adult rat striatum. Brain Research 1007 (1-2), 29-38 (2004).
Dong Sun, Raymond J. Colello, Wilson P. Daugherty, Taek H. Kwon, Melissa J. McGinn, H. Ben Harvey, M. Ross Bullock.
Cell proliferation and neuronal differentiation in the dentate gyrus in juvenile and adult rats following traumatic brain
injury. J. Neurotrauma 22 (1) 95-105 (2005).
Dong Sun, Melissa J McGinn, Zhengwen Zhou, H Ben Harvey, M Ross Bullock, Raymond J Colello.
Anatomical integration of newly generated dentate granule neurons following traumatic brain injury in
adult rats and its association to cognitive recovery. Experimental Neurology 204 (1) 264-72 (2007).
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