Dr. Anna Stoll Anxious to Tackle Challenges of Parkinson’s Disease

In her approach toward researching the puzzles of degenerative neurological diseases such as Parkinson’s, Anna Stoll likes to remember what a neurologist once told her.

“He said, ‘When you’ve seen one patient with Parkinson’s, you’ve seen one patient with Parkinson’s,” she said. “It means everyone is different and that makes it a little harder. We’re making strides, and there are a lot of passionate people working on it.”

But the next sentence in the conversation, at least for the time being, is the realization that so much still needs to be done.

Dr. Stoll, who graduated from MSU’s Pharmacology & Toxicology PhD program in 2022 and recently started a new post-doctoral position at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, hopes she can be one of those on the forefront of understanding, treating and perhaps curing Parkinson’s.

“I think there are strides being made,” she said. “They’re slow but there are some promising treatments to help alleviate symptoms. The more we know, the closer we’ll get.”

But it’s a long journey. The U.S. population is getting older and living longer, and according to the Parkinson’s Foundation, some 90,000 people are diagnosed with the disease every year. That is expected to increase to 1.2 million by 2030. It is the second-most common neurodegenerative disease next to Alzheimer’s disease.

Dr. Stoll, a native of Passaic, N.J., said she developed her interest in studying Parkinson’s almost by accident as an undergraduate studying forensic science with a concentration on molecular biology and toxicology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City.

“I kind of fell into it,” Dr. Stoll said. “There was a professor I really liked, and I wanted to work with her and she was working on Parkinson’s. I fell in love with it from there and have stayed with it ever since.”

That professor, Dr. Shu-Yuan Cheng, sparked that interest, and after graduation, she went to Hunter College and earned her master’s in biological science.

“I really enjoyed forensics and I thought I’d be a lab person,” Dr. Stoll said. “Then I started doing medical research, and as much as I loved the criminal side of things, I liked the medicine side better. It just made me feel good and I enjoyed it.”

Upon choosing MSU’s Pharmacology and Toxicology doctoral program, Dr. Stoll worked through the COVID-19 pandemic with her mentor, Dr. Caryl Sortwell, in the Translational Neuroscience Department in the College of Human Medicine in Grand Rapids.

Dr. Stoll recently published two papers relating to her PhD work. The first of these papers, published in Neurobiology of Disease, documents her studies to understand how the brain's immune system responds to Parkinson's disease.

Patients with Parkinson’s disease develop aggregates (or clumps) of a protein known as alpha-synuclein in the brain. These protein aggregates lead to the loss of neurons and inflammation in the brain.

Using an animal model that mimics the aggregation of alpha-synuclein, Dr. Stoll was able to identify specific changes in the microglia and astrocytes in the brain; these are the cells that regulate inflammation. Interestingly, the changes in immune cell function occurred long before neuronal death was observed.

This observation led Anna to her second recently published study, where she investigated the possibility that microglial inflammation was contributing to the progression of the neuronal death that leads to Parkinson’s disease.

She used a novel drug that she hoped would reduce the number of microglia in the brain and, therefore, reduce the inflammation and neuronal death. Unfortunately, this novel treatment did not work.

However, the studies did add another piece to Parkinson’s puzzle; we now know that the disease symptoms are not driven by increased microglial numbers alone.

After a postdoc opportunity with Dr. Sortwell for more than a year, she now has the chance to continue her work in the Department of Neurology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where she will work with Dr. Ashley Harms on neuroinflammation and neurodegeneration in Parkinson’s.

“I was very fortunate,” Dr. Stoll said. “She’s considered a rising star in the field, and I wanted to learn from her. I’m excited to be a part of it.”

Though still early in her research career, she believes the study of Parkinson’s and other degenerative neurological diseases could be the direction in which she devotes her career.

“I can see myself doing this, and I can see myself looking at other diseases as well,” she said. “We want to make sure were answering questions that need to be answered. The patients are the reasons we do this.”