Our People

Dr Björn Vahsen

Junior Research Fellow

Postdoctoral Research, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences er,

DPhil and MSc (Oxford); Staatsexamen Medizin DM (Georg-August-University, Göttingen)

Björn graduated from medical school at the Georg-August-University Göttingen in Germany with a medical degree and a research MD (summa cum laude and prize for the best thesis of the year). His MD project (with Paul Lingor) focused on the role of autophagy in axonal degeneration and regeneration using cell models. He then completed the MSc in Neuroscience and a DPhil in Clinical Neurosciences at the Oxford Motor Neuron Disease Centre (with Kevin Talbot and Martin Turner), studying the role of microglia in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). He received the Postgraduate Prize 2023 from the British Neuroscience Association and the Felgenhauer Research Award 2023 for Young Neuroscientists from the German Neurological Society for his DPhil work.

Currently, Björn is a Postdoctoral Researcher with Kevin Talbot at the Oxford Motor Neuron Disease Centre (Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences). His research focuses on the role of non-neuronal cells in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, also known as motor neuron disease [MND]) pathophysiology and their potential as therapeutic targets. He has a particular interest in microglia (brain immune cells) and their contribution to motor neuron dysfunction and death in ALS. He  uses induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) models to derive ALS-relevant cell types (human microglia and motor neurons) from people with genetic forms of ALS to answer how ALS-associated mutations affect microglial biology and whether microglia with ALS-associated mutations affect motor neuron function.