New CELL Faculty Member Profile – Brett Hilton
Dr. Hilton is a recently appointed Assistant Professor in the Department of Cellular & Physiological Sciences, a member of the Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health (DMCBH), and a Principal Investigator at the International Collaboration on Repair Discoveries (ICORD), whose lab is located on the 5th floor of the Blusson Spinal Cord Centre at Vancouver General Hospital.
Brett completed his PhD at ICORD, where he discovered his passion for spinal cord injury research and learnt to apply optogenetic and chemogenetic strategies to discern mechanisms of plasticity following injury. His postdoc was spent in Bonn, Germany at the German Centre for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE), where he gained expertise in cellular and molecular mechanisms of axon growth, discovered that critical components of the synapse suppress axon regeneration, and discovered the actin-based mechanism through which RhoA suppresses axon growth and astrocyte reactivity following injury.
Dr. Hilton and his team are interested in understanding how neurons lose their capacity to effectively regenerate their axons during embryonic or early postnatal development. The major goal of the Hilton Lab is to discover a clinically feasible strategy to coax regeneration and repair of the injured spinal cord. Dr. Hilton and his team are also interested in understanding the circuit-level mechanisms that enable recovery, particularly in the motor system, following injury or disease.
Click here to find out more about Dr. Hilton’s lab.
Welcome Dr. Hilton!