Ashley Carey
Ashley Carey earned the Toffler Scholar Award in 2023 at Temple University
Biography
Ashley Carey was born in northern New Jersey and lived there until third grade, when she and her family relocated to Monroe, a large suburban town in the central part of the state. The oldest of three children, Carey has a younger sister and brother.
Ashley learned a lot about science and medicine through her parents’ work. Her mother is a nurse practitioner specializing in pediatric oncology, and her father is in auditing at a pharmaceutical company. Ashley remembers having long conversations with her mother about the work she was doing to help her young patients. Learning about the type of diagnostic tests her mother would conduct piqued Ashley’s curiosity about how the body works, how things can go wrong, how to screen for different diseases and, most importantly, how to treat those diseases.
Even as a young student, Ashley knew she wanted to get into a good college, so excelling academically was a priority. She was studious but also very social. She loved hanging out with her friends and pursued a variety of activities outside of academics. She was a cheerleader for 10 years and played softball for an equal amount of time. She also played basketball and, in high school, picked up field hockey. Music was—and still is—one of Ashley’s passions. The flute was her instrument of choice throughout elementary and middle school; now it’s the drums. Art is another one of Ashley’s creative interests. During her formative years, she painted and drew a lot and now, in her free time, she still does.
Academically, Ashley gravitated toward science. She originally wanted to be a marine biologist, but as she entered middle and high school, she started to hear more about neuroscience. She was increasingly curious about the brain and how it controls everything we do. Then, when her grandparents started having neurological issues, her interest transformed from more scientific to highly personal. She wanted to understand her grandparents’ diagnoses and how she could help them. This experience ultimately motivated her to pursue a career where she could help people with neurological issues.
After graduating from high school, Ashley attended Lafayette College in Eason, Pennsylvania, where she earned her undergraduate degree in neuroscience. While there, she worked in the lab of Dr. Elaine Reynolds, a biology and neuroscience professor who soon became Ashley’s mentor. Initially, Ashley thought she wanted to become a physician, but during her junior year, she began to question that path. Dr. Reynolds suggested that, based on Ashley’s passion for research and the scientific process, she should consider going into research. This was an epiphany for Ashley. She had no idea this was a viable career option for her.
With Dr. Reynolds’ guidance, Ashley applied to PhD programs in Neuroscience. She is now in her fifth year of studies at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University, where she is completing her thesis project in the lab of fellow Toffler Scholar Dr. Silvia Fossati, the Associate Professor of Pharmacology and Associate Director of the Alzheimer's Center at the university.
Ashley’s research focuses on understanding whether specific cardiovascular risk factors contribute to the onset and progression of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and dementia. Specifically, she wants to determine if these risk factors work through similar mechanisms as amyloid beta (Aβ), a protein that builds up in the brains of AD patients and contributes to the cognitive dysfunction often associated with the disease.
“When people think of Alzheimer's or dementia, they immediately go to amyloid beta—that’s the primary cause and comes first. But a lot of studies are showing that vascular alterations can start before the build-up of amyloid beta. This realization is shifting the field to focus on better understanding the vascular aspects of the disease and the role they play.”
- Ashley Carey, PhD Candidate
BIOGRAPHY
Ashley Carey was born in northern New Jersey and lived there until third grade, when she and her family relocated to Monroe, a large suburban town in the central part of the state. The oldest of three children, Carey has a younger sister and brother.
Ashley learned a lot about science and medicine through her parents’ work. Her mother is a nurse practitioner specializing in pediatric oncology, and her father is in auditing at a pharmaceutical company. Ashley remembers having long conversations with her mother about the work she was doing to help her young patients. Learning about the type of diagnostic tests her mother would conduct piqued Ashley’s curiosity about how the body works, how things can go wrong, how to screen for different diseases and, most importantly, how to treat those diseases.
Even as a young student, Ashley knew she wanted to get into a good college, so excelling academically was a priority. She was studious but also very social. She loved hanging out with her friends and pursued a variety of activities outside of academics. She was a cheerleader for 10 years and played softball for an equal amount of time. She also played basketball and, in high school, picked up field hockey. Music was—and still is—one of Ashley’s passions. The flute was her instrument of choice throughout elementary and middle school; now it’s the drums. Art is another one of Ashley’s creative interests. During her formative years, she painted and drew a lot and now, in her free time, she still does.
Academically, Ashley gravitated toward science. She originally wanted to be a marine biologist, but as she entered middle and high school, she started to hear more about neuroscience. She was increasingly curious about the brain and how it controls everything we do. Then, when her grandparents started having neurological issues, her interest transformed from more scientific to highly personal. She wanted to understand her grandparents’ diagnoses and how she could help them. This experience ultimately motivated her to pursue a career where she could help people with neurological issues.
After graduating from high school, Ashley attended Lafayette College in Eason, Pennsylvania, where she earned her undergraduate degree in neuroscience. While there, she worked in the lab of Dr. Elaine Reynolds, a biology and neuroscience professor who soon became Ashley’s mentor. Initially, Ashley thought she wanted to become a physician, but during her junior year, she began to question that path. Dr. Reynolds suggested that, based on Ashley’s passion for research and the scientific process, she should consider going into research. This was an epiphany for Ashley. She had no idea this was a viable career option for her.
With Dr. Reynolds’ guidance, Ashley applied to PhD programs in Neuroscience. She is now in her fifth year of studies at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University, where she is completing her thesis project in the lab of fellow Toffler Scholar Dr. Silvia Fossati, the Associate Professor of Pharmacology and Associate Director of the Alzheimer's Center at the university.
Ashley’s research focuses on understanding whether specific cardiovascular risk factors contribute to the onset and progression of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and dementia. Specifically, she wants to determine if these risk factors work through similar mechanisms as amyloid beta (Aβ), a protein that builds up in the brains of AD patients and contributes to the cognitive dysfunction often associated with the disease.
“When people think of Alzheimer's or dementia, they immediately go to amyloid beta—that’s the primary cause and comes first. But a lot of studies are showing that vascular alterations can start before the build-up of amyloid beta. This realization is shifting the field to focus on better understanding the vascular aspects of the disease and the role they play.”
- Ashley Carey, PhD Candidate
Research Focus
Challenges
AD is the most common age-associated dementia, with case numbers exponentially rising across the globe. In the scientific and medical community, it’s well accepted that the protein Aβ plays a significant role in the progression of the disease. But recent evidence suggests that cerebrovascular issues may precede Aβ-associated disease processes. In light of these findings, scientists and researchers are now looking to understand the impact of cerebrovascular risk factors on the onset and progression of AD.
Focus and Priorities
Recent studies demonstrate that cerebrovascular risk factors—particularly hypertension and hyperhomocysteinemia (a condition that occurs when there is too much of the metabolite homocysteine in the blood)—are linked to an increased risk of AD and can exacerbate the progression of the disease. Ashley’s research has shown that Aβ causes dysfunction in the brain's blood vessels, specifically in the cerebral endothelial cells (cEC), and impairs the growth of new blood vessels. Ashley has also demonstrated that homocysteine, low oxygen, and reduced glucose—the latter two associated with hypertension—increase the harmful effects of Aβ on cEC, leading to cell dysfunction and vascular abnormalities.
Research Ashley has conducted via cell studies suggest that homocysteine acts through mechanisms similar to Aβ, contributing to cEC cell death, vascular dysfunction, and impaired cell growth. Ashley is now working to validate these findings by inducing hyperhomocysteinemia and hypertension in healthy mouse models as well as AD mouse models with Aβ-induced brain vascular dysfunction. She hypotheses that these cerebrovascular risk factors will cause cEC dysfunction in otherwise healthy mice and, for AD mouse models, exacerbate Aβ-induced cEC cell death as well as disrupt the blood-brain barrier and cause defects in the growth of new blood vessels.
Benefits
Ashley believes that, if we can better understand the role that cerebrovascular risk factors play in the onset and progression of AD, and whether or not they work through similar mechanisms of Aβ, then we can begin to do targeted research on those mechanisms. This would enable researchers to begin exploring ways to reduce the impact of cerebrovascular risk factors and find treatment options.
Karen Toffler Charitable Trust Investment
Funding from the Karen Toffler Charitable Trust will enable Ashley to accelerate the progression of her research, allowing her to expand the scope of her work to include more cell experiments and, ideally, introduce RNA sequencing into her studies to see cellular changes at the RNA level.
There are also a variety of promising techniques she would like to integrate into her research, such as immunohistochemistry experiments, which allow her to employ fluorescent staining to examine and compare frozen brain slices from healthy and diseased mouse models to track, demonstrate, and inform her research. Ideally, these could be compared to equivalent human samples to further elucidate and even validate her findings.
Karen Toffler Charitable Trust Investment
Funding from the Karen Toffler Charitable Trust will enable Ashley to accelerate the progression of her research, allowing her to expand the scope of her work to include more cell experiments and, ideally, introduce RNA sequencing into her studies to see cellular changes at the RNA level.
There are also a variety of promising techniques she would like to integrate into her research, such as immunohistochemistry experiments, which allow her to employ fluorescent staining to examine and compare frozen brain slices from healthy and diseased mouse models to track, demonstrate, and inform her research. Ideally, these could be compared to equivalent human samples to further elucidate and even validate her findings.
“I feel like a lot of people think you just do the research and get an answer. But you can’t. It’s a lot of troubleshooting—a lot of failures that you have to accept without getting discouraged. You’re constantly tweaking and adjusting what you’re doing so that, slowly but surely, eventually, ideally, you'll get to where you need to be.”
- Ashley Carey, PhD Candidate