WAVERLY, IOWA (April 20, 2023) — Roberto Munoz, of East Moline, was one of nine Wartburg College students to present at the National Conference for Undergraduate Research (NCUR) April 13-15 at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.
Munoz presented "Vidutolimod uptake by leukocytes: elucidating the role of granulocytes & the impact on their activation."
Martinez, who spent his summer at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, worked with 7T MRI brain-scans of patients who had sustained a mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), commonly known as a concussion. He used those brain images to observe whether there was an impairment to the glymphatic system and whether there would be a development of enlarged perivascular spaces (ePVS) following the injury to the brain. Patients enrolled in this ninety-day study were assessed at three separate post-injury time periods that examined the neurobehavioral symptoms experienced and the quality of sleep in conjunction with their 7T MRI exams.
"The most exciting thing about this research is that this is a relatively new branch of science as the glymphatic system was only discovered in the last decade. Most of the research in the United States in this field has been conducted on mice models, but I had the opportunity to work with human patients. Knowing that there is much to discover and learn is an exciting and invigorating feeling for a young student pursuing a career in medicine," Martinez said.
Martinez plans are to return to the University of Illinois this summer to continue the follow-up research studies aimed at seeing whether ePVS burden is associated with specific neurobehavioral symptoms and whether this burden is associated with long-term neurodegenerative changes.
The conference features thousands of presenters from around the country in a variety of fields. The students were accompanied by professors Stephanie Toering Peters and Sean Coleman.
Wartburg, a four-year liberal-arts college internationally recognized for community engagement, enrolls 1,444 students. Wartburg is affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and named after the castle in Germany where Martin Luther took refuge, disguised as a knight, during the stormy days of the Reformation while translating the Bible from Greek into German.
