Dr Mariah Lelos

After completing a PhD (2010) exploring cognitive dysfunction in Alzheimer's disease, Dr Mariah Lelos undertook post-doctoral training in the field of cell replacement therapy for Parkinson’s and Huntington’s disease. She was subsequently awarded the 2015 Parkinson’s UK Senior Research Fellowship to study the impact of human pluripotent stem cell derived dopamine (hPSC-derived DA) grafts on cognitive and neuropsychiatric features of Parkinson’s disease in rodent models. Dr Lelos is now a Reader in the School of Biosciences, Cardiff University, where she co-direct the Brain Repair Group (BRG). The BRG focuses on developing novel cell and gene therapies to treat neurodegenerative diseases, particularly Huntington’s and Parkinson’s diseases. Dr Lelos continues to have an interest in treating the cognitive and neuropsychiatric features of the diseases and she employees a wide-range of rodent models, including lesion, viral vector and genetically modified rodent models, and has experience in a range of in vivo techniques, including preclinical imaging, neuronal tracing and neural system modulation.
Dr Lelos acts as Deputy Head of the Neuroscience Division; is co-I within the Medicines Discovery Institute (MDI) and co-I in the Dementia Research Institute (DRI); co-leads an international working group on animal models of neurodegeneration and sits on several steering committees of international consortia.