Courtney Marshall, PhD

Dr. Courtney Marshall is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Neurodegenerative Disease Research (CNDR) under the mentorship of its director Dr. Virginia Lee. She received her BS from Davidson College before spending two years conducting intramural research as a postbaccalaureate fellow at the National Institute on Aging. Dr. Marshall next earned her PhD in Neuroscience from Drexel University’s College of Medicine, where she studied the pharmacological modulation of dopamine receptors as treatment in a rodent model of Parkinson’s disease. She joined the CNDR to further develop her scientific career in neurodegenerative research. During her postdoctoral training Dr. Marshall has investigated aggregated tau, one of the pathological hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). She has utilized post-mortem tissue from AD patients as well as patient-derived tau pathology to further elucidate the role of the glutamate receptors in the pathogenesis of this disease. Dr. Marshall’s research specifically studies the pathological contribution of the synaptic localization of NR2B subtype-containing glutamate receptors and the therapeutic significance of pharmacologically targeting their cellular movement. Her work continues to investigate novel purposes for a clinically approved drug that targets NR2B localization and may hold promise for the treatment of various AD symptoms.