About Qing Yi Ma, PhD

Being engaged in neuroscience research for many years, I built up research experiences and expertise in studying various neurological disorders which occur at different stages of the human life cycle from fetuses to adults, including fetal programming of brain disorders, neonatal hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE), cerebral ischemic stroke, and neurodegenerative disorders.

My laboratory investigates cerebrovascular dysfunction and neuroinflammation in neonatal hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy and ischemic brain injury. We focus on

1) the specialization and metabolism of brain pericytes during brain development, and their contribution to neonatal brain injury; 2) underlying molecular mechanisms by targeting microRNAs, receptor, and other regulatory proteins in brain pericytes and endothelial cells at the blood-brain barrier in neonatal HIE.

We use innovative techniques, including transgenic mouse lines with pericytes reporters or specific genes knockout, transcriptomic sequencing, Seahorse metabolic analyzer, Confocal imaging, Flow Cytometry, etc.