Q&A with Morgan Coburn, Ph.D.

The CNLM is home to remarkable graduate students whose impact shines through—both in their research and their advocacy. The Center is fortunate to have recent UCI graduate Morgan Coburn, Ph.D as a Neuroscience Outreach and Education Fellow to help advance the outreach and education goals of the CNLM.

Dr. Coburn explains more about her research into microglia—an immune cell in the brain that may be the key to understanding Alzheimer’s disease—and her passion for outreach and education, including her transition to becoming an accessibility and disability advocate both at the Center and beyond.

Tell us about your thesis research at UCI.

I did my Ph.D. with Dr. Matt Blurton-Jones, where I studied the role of microglia in Alzheimer's disease (AD). Microglia are vital for various brain tasks, from immune functions like clearing debris and fighting infections to unique roles like holding a memory for past events.

They play an important huge role in Alzheimer's disease, and are in fact the #1 cell type in the brain that is associated with increases in risk for Late Onset Alzheimer's Disease. Microglia will cluster around the beta-Amyloid plaques that comprise one of the two main pathological hallmarks of AD (the other being neurofibrillary tangles), where they are thought to "wall off" the plaques from the rest of the brain.

Studying this non-neuron cell type in the human brain is very important. However, researchers have run into some problems.

1) You can study human cells but they have to be in a dish or from a patient who has undergone brain surgery or has passed and donated their brains–both situations were not ideal for studying microglia who I lovingly call the toddlers of the brain since if you look at them wrong they throw a temper tantrum.

2) Lab mice are not humans and their genes and especially those of the immune system are substantially different.

The solution? Transplant human induced pluripotent stem cell derived microglia progenitors (called HPCs) into a mouse pup (who was genetically modified to support the survival of these cells).

I worked with Dr. Blurton-Jones and another graduate student in the lab to develop a protocol to do this and we found that "our" transplanted microglia far more closely matched that of true human microglia than the ones in a dish or a mouse and behaved in the way we expected towards AD pathology, thus creating a tool to ask questions about uniquely human microglial dynamics in AD.

As a graduate student, I became heavily involved with the CNLM's Ambassador Program, a volunteer group of trainees who develop and host educational events at the Center and in the community. I served as co-chair to the Brain Explorer Academy (BEA), a program that has now evolved into a NIH-SEPA funded research program to broaden participation in neuroscience through outreach to high school students. Volunteer work gave me an outlet for both fun but also seeing tangible successes with shorter timelines and making a difference when the research I did in the lab moved at a much slower pace.

How do you share your experience with disability in science?

As a Type 1 Diabetic, I proudly identify as Disabled but it took me many years to get to this point. When I was younger I tried my best to be as "normal" as possible and bought the lie that I could be as long as I counted my carbs and took my insulin but T1D is not that simple. It is a constant balancing act with deadly consequences that loom daily and striving for "normalcy" took an incredible toll on my mental and physical health. By the time the pandemic hit, I had struggled with finding a diet that kept my body and mind healthy and I was exhausted to the bone. In isolation, I finally had the time to sit down and try to figure out what my disabled body needed, rather than try to confirm my best to "normal." As many of us did during that time, I looked to the internet for community and I found a group of Diabetics that were sharing their stories and advice and I slowly learned how to work with my body. Integral to this group is patient advocacy and standing up against the price gouging of pharmaceutical companies and the astronomical cost of insulin. I became inspired by this group and became an advocate myself. I made earrings out of empty insulin vials and sent them to Congresswomen (shout out to Katie Porter for wearing them and talking about the cost of insulin).

As a part of this project I talked about my experience with diabetes and was humbled by the responses of the scientists, not just the other diabetics in my network, that really listened and responded with how they had no idea what diabetes is like. Disability is not only taboo and difficult to talk about but can have serious consequences in an ableist world. In studies that evaluate the experiences of disabled female, queer, and/or POC scientists in the workplace there are huge disparities in comfort level in revealing disability status which compound with intersectionality, where roughly 50% of straight and LGBTQ White Women report feeling comfortable, which drops to 30% of straight Women of Color, and 0% of the surveyed LGBTQ Women of Color reported feeling comfortable revealing their disability status (Metcalf, Russel, and Hill, 2018).

Through sharing my experience I realized I wanted to help other scientists talk about their experiences with disability. In 2023, I painted Miranda Chappel-Farley's (UCI Yassa Lab Alum) experience with sleep apnea. Learning how her personal passions in sleep neuroscience are informed by her lived experience was a beautiful example of how we need more diverse perspectives in neuroscience. Currently, I am in the beginning stages of a new piece for a scientist so stay tuned at morgancoburn.com. Having a disability shapes the way I see things and as a result is a lens for which I work as an Outreach and Education Fellow at the CNLM. I hope to continue my advocacy for disability in STEM and make science a friendlier and more accepting place for all scientists.