Sarah
Palko

Dr. Sarah Palko is a Research Fellow in Professor Sarah Doyle’s Lab at Trinity College Dublin. She received her B.S. in Biology from the University of Saint Joseph (2018), completed her Ph.D. in Neuroscience at the University of Connecticut (2023), and is currently undertaking postdoctoral training in immunology and ophthalmology. Her research focuses on the role of retinal Müller glia in neuroinflammation and age-related retinal diseases, particularly age-related macular degeneration (AMD). She uses in vivo models, including laser-induced choroidal neovascularization (liCNV) and retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) atrophy models, to study how glial-immune interactions contribute to disease progression. Her doctoral work identified key Müller glial signaling pathways in subretinal fibrosis and retinal degeneration, including the discovery of hypercitrullinated proteins in human AMD and the identification of PAD4 as a potential therapeutic target.

Dr. Palko has also extended her work into Alzheimer’s disease research, where she demonstrated that Müller glia act as early responders to amyloid pathology in the retina. Her current postdoctoral research in the Doyle Lab integrates glial biology and immunology to investigate how peripheral immune cells contribute to AMD progression and how Müller glial signaling regulates this process. She has authored multiple first-author publications in PNAS, Glia, and the Journal of Neuroscience Research, and contributed to several collaborative studies on immune cell dynamics in retinal disease, including a recent study published in Cell Reports Medicine. Her work has been recognized through competitive awards and travel grants from ARVO, the Retina Research Foundation, and Fighting Blindness Ireland. Dr. Palko’s broader research goal is to define how glial-immune interactions drive retinal degeneration and to identify therapeutic strategies to preserve vision in blinding diseases such as AMD.