Event
BIOE Seminar: Intravital micro characterization of disease pathology in the living rodent brain
Friday, December 5, 2025
9:00 a.m.
A. James Clark Hall, Room #2121
Nan Xu
nanxu@umd.edu
Abbas Yaseen
Assistant Professor
Northeastern University
Intravital microscopic characterization of disease pathology in the living rodent brain
Abstract
Healthy brain function is vitally dependent on a well-regulated energy supply and a toxin-free micro-environment. For several brain disorders, such as Alzheimer's disease (AD), Parkinson's disease, and ischemic stroke, the earliest hallmarks of disease progression include disruptions to energy metabolism, blood flow, and neuroinflammation. In order to develop effective diagnostic and therapeutic techniques for these and other debilitating brain disorders, more precise understanding of the brain’s intricate pathological processes is essential. Investigations of these processes urgently require nondisruptive, high-resolution observations in the living brain to characterize the intricate signaling between neurons, glial cells, and the blood vessels that supply them with metabolites.
I will discuss my team’s developments of intravital optical imaging methods to monitor cellular signaling, neuroinflammation, and microvascular hemodynamics in preclinical rodent models. Multiphoton microscopy, optical coherence tomography, and multispectral optical intrinsic signal imaging enable high-resolution quantitation of cerebral oxygenation, calcium signaling, and red blood cell dynamics. Longitudinal measurements of these and other parameters will be presented from the live cortex and hippocampus in mouse models. These observations will ultimately lead to a deeper understanding of inflammatory and metabolic interdependencies during the preclinical stages of AD and other diseases.
Speaker Bio
(Mohammad) Abbas Yaseen joined the Northeastern University Bioengineering Department in January, 2020. He obtained his bachelors in Biomedical and Electrical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University and doctorate in Bioengineering from Rice University. He conducted postdoctoral and junior faculty research at the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital. His research interests are in the areas of optical microscopy, brain energy metabolism, and neurodegenerative disease, and neuromodulation. His recent work explores early pathological changes to energy metabolism, inflammation, and microvascular hemodynamics in rodent models, and the putative benefits of non-pharmacological treatments.
