Meet Dr Natalia Egorova

Epilepsy is a devastating disease with up to 30 per cent of patients not adequately treated by current anti-epileptic drugs. Historically, epilepsy therapies were based only on the broad syndrome suffered by a patient. However, a rapid rise in our knowledge of the genetics underlying epilepsy syndromes gives hope that we can deliver precision medicine tailored to the needs of each patient.

Associate Professor Chris Reid wants to answer the question, “Do we treat the syndrome or should we treat the mutation?” Dravet is a devastating epileptic syndrome resulting in childhood cognitive and developmental delays.

Chris uses two models of Dravet syndrome caused by mutations in two different genes, SCN1A and SCN2B. His two genetic models of these mutations suggest very distinct cellular mechanisms underlie brain cell excitability causing epileptic seizures. This implies that different therapeutic strategies may be required to successfully treat patients presenting with similar symptoms but that have distinct genetic causes. Chris is also developing exciting ideas about how to directly target the mechanisms caused by various genetic lesions. Chris’ work has been supported by the Dowd Foundation

Relaxin has a similar molecular structure to Insulin so while trying to create a stable, active and safe form of the relaxin peptide, Akhter was also able to produce a super-stable form of the insulin peptide. Insulin rapidly degrades if it is left at room temperature which poses immense storage and handling problems for hot and poorer regions.

Research Fellowship – a $300,000 fellowship funded by Carl and Wendy Dowd, designed to support extraordinarily talented researchers. We thank Wendy and Carl for their ongoing support of the Florey.

Now happily ensconced at the Florey’s Heidelberg campus, Natalia is buried in a mountain of rich data, gathered from 175 stroke patients and healthy volunteers. She is on a quest. Natalia is trying to determine if the brain’s wider networks go into cognitive decline after a stroke, separate to the localised damage caused when the stroke occurs.

“We tend to think of a stroke as a lesion somewhere in the brain that disrupts your ability to function in a particular way,” she says.

“But we also suspect that people experience general degeneration and cognitive decline associated with the stroke.”

Natalia is a member of Associate Professor Amy Brodtmann’s team. They are working on an ambitious longitudinal research program, scanning the brains of stroke patients at defined intervals for the next five years. So far the data is in for one year, post stroke.

“We are looking at the brains of the stroke patients to see if they eventually develop cognitive decline or dementia,” she says.

A major thrust of Natalia’s research is to determine whether depression may be caused by the disruption of a stroke or through general decline of brain networks.

“We’ve found depression in about 30 per cent of stroke patients,” she says. “We’ll need the data at three years or five years to find out if patients get dementia.”

“While the motor cortex is directly related to motor function, higher cognitive tasks such as long term memory, attention or decisionmaking are spread around the brain,” she says.

“The depression we are talking about is only mild but if we look at our data, already we can see differences in the brain between stroke patients who are mildly depressed and those who are not. There is something physically and biologically present in the brain that drives these depressions or is associated in this decline.”

Fast Facts: Dr Natalia Egorova, PhD

Loves languages. She has worked as an interpreter in Russian, English and French, but also speaks German and some Dutch.

Natalia loves travel, running and cycling.

Married an Australian, Dr Douglas Brumley, who is a lecturer in mathematics at the University of Melbourne. They met at Cambridge University.

Her hometown (Komsomolsk-onAmur) is known for manufacturing Russian fighter jets.

She and her husband make their own cheese, and are particularly proud of their home-made Stilton and a Parmesan that took 12 months to mature.

She’s heading to Vancouver in late June to a symposium discussing ideas relating to the neuro-degenerative impact of strokes.