Soraya Meftah

Personal profile

• 2023 - Present: Postdoctoral Research Fellow, CDBS/UKDRI, University of Edinburgh.
• 2020 - 2023: Postdoctoral Research Fellow, UKDRI, University of Edinburgh.
• 2016 - 2020: PhD Medical Studies (Neuroscience), University of Exeter & University of Bristol.
• 2013 - 2016: Molecular Pathology (Histologist). Eli Lilly and Company, Surrey UK.
• 2011 – 2011: Research Assistant. CNRS, Lyon, France.
• BSc Biochemistry (Pharmacology), University of Surrey.

Dr Soraya Meftah spent a placement year during her BSc working as a research assistant at the CNRS in Lyon, where she examined the effect of REM sleep deprivation on cataplexy in a model of narcolepsy with Dr Christelle Peyron. Prior to her PhD, Soraya worked at Eli Lilly and Company as a molecular pathologist with a focus on drug discovery for neurodegenerative diseases. She then went on to do her PhD with Dr Jon Brown, Dr Jon Witton & Dr Michael Ashby, examining synaptic and neuronal dysfunction in a model of tauopathy using in vivo and in vitro whole-cell patch clamp electrophysiology, histology, and molecular biology techniques. Following this, she worked with Dr Jian Gan as a postdoctoral research fellow, characterising dysfunction in models of dementia using simultaneous in vivo whole-cell patch clamp recordings alongside LFP and other techniques. Currently, she is employed as a postdoctoral research fellow with Dr Claire Durrant.

Research

My current research focuses on characterisation and functional assessment in organotypic slice culture models (murine, human) of dementia.

Relevant Publications

Meftah S., Gan J. Alzheimer’s disease as a synaptopathy: Evidence for dysfunction of synapses during disease progression (2023). Frontiers in Synaptic Neuroscience, 15, 1129036.

Meftah S., Witton J., Cavallini A., Murray T.K., Jankowski L., Bose S., Ashby M.C., Brown J.T. Synaptic alterations associated with disrupted sensory encoding in a mouse model of tauopathy (2023). BioRxiv.

Jackson J.S., Johnson J.D., Meftah S., Murray T.K., Ahmed Z., Fasiolo M., Hutton M.L., Isaac J.T.R., O’Neill M.J., Ashby M.C. Differential aberrant structural synaptic plasticity in axons and dendrites ahead of their degeneration in tauopathy (2020). BioRxiv.

Harrison I. F., Ismail O., Machhada A., Colgan N., Ohene Y., Nahavandi P., Ahmed Z., Fisher A., Meftah S., Murray T.K., Ottersen O.P., Nagelhus E.A., O’Neill M.J., Wells J.A., Lythgoe M.F. Impaired glymphatic function and clearance of tau in an Alzheimer’s disease model (2020). Brain, awaa179.

Roman A., Meftah S., Arthaud S., Luppi P.H., Peyron C. The inappropriate occurrence of rapid eye movement sleep in Narcolepsy is not due to a defect in homeostatic regulation of rapid eye movement sleep (2018). Sleep 41,6.

Blackmore T., Meftah S., Murray T.K., Craig P.J., Blockeel A., Phillips K., Eastwood B., O’Neill M.J., Marston H., Ahmed Z., Gilmour G., Gastambide F. Tracking progressive pathological and functional decline in the rTg4510 mouse model of tauopathy (2017). Alzheimer’s Research & Therapy 9 p.77.

O’Callaghan J., Holmes H., Powell N., Wells J.A., Ismail O., Harrison I.F., Siow B., Johnson R., Ahmed Z., Fisher A., Meftah S., O’Neill M.J., Murray T.K., Collins E.C., Shumeli K., Lythgoe M.F. Tissue magnetic susceptibility mapping as a marker of tau pathology in Alzheimer’s disease (2017). NeuroImage 159 p. 334-345.