Sean Quinlan

Dr Sean Quinlan graduated from University College Dublin (BSc) in Pharmacology and from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) with a PhD in Physiology and Medical Physics. During his graduate research he studied the effects of anti-seizure and anti-inflammatory drugs on neonatal hypoxia-induced seizures. He continued neuropharmacology as a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Dr. Patrick Forcelli in Georgetown University in Washington D.C. There he focused on interactions between drugs and seizures in producing long-term outcomes after early life exposure, utilising next-gen sequencing, in vivo electrophysiology and behaviour techniques.

As part of his NeuroInsight fellowship he is researching EpiPatchSeq and how the use of the novel technique of “Patch-Seq” to further their understanding of Epilepsy development and progression. Underpinning EpiPatchSeq is our lack of understanding of cellular mechanisms by which epilepsy-inciting events initiate epileptogenesis and subsequent disease progression, integrating transcriptomic, electrophysiological and morphological dynamics at a single-cell resolution.

It aims to further our understanding the relationship between gene expression, electrophysiology and morphology domains of CA3 neurons of the hippocampus which underlie specific vulnerability in epilepsy and the roles they play in disease progression.