Dr. Autumn Ivy
Assistant Professor, Department of Pediatrics, University of California, Irvine School of Medicine
Attending Pediatric Neurologist UC Irvine Medical Center, CHOC.
Residency and Fellowship, Stanford University
MD/PhD in Neuroscience, University of California, Irvine
As an Assistant Professor at UC Irvine and an attending pediatric neurologist, Dr. Autumn Ivy wears many hats. However, central to all her roles is her desire to bridge the gap between the clinical and research worlds as a translational neuroscientist. In her lab, she studies the role of exercise in the development of cognitive function, with the hopes that this research will one day help the pediatric neurology patients she sees in the clinic.
Autumn was interested in studying neuroscience when she applied to college; formative experiences with relatives affected by neurological conditions had piqued her interest in exploring the brain. Therefore, she applied to college as a general biology major, hoping to focus on neuroscience. She got a full scholarship to California State University, Los Angeles with a unique twist: her scholarship included a small stipend for doing research in a lab. Autumn’s mother, wary of the burden student loans could become, was delighted at the opportunity and suggested that Autumn accept the offer. Autumn, reflecting back, is grateful for her mother’s insight.
At Cal State LA, she joined the lab of Dr. Amelia Russo-Neustadt, a physician scientist who studies how antidepressants and exercise work synergistically to influence the function of the aging brain. Through her work with Amelia, Autumn learned the value of coupling basic research with clinical work. As one of few students in this nascent lab, Autumn took ownership of her own project and published her first paper. Enthralled with the research world, Autumn set out to apply for PhD programs. However, continued work and discussions with Amelia showed Autumn the value of combining clinical work with a doctorate, leading Autumn to apply to programs where she could get both a doctorate and a medical degree (or an MD-PhD).
In an MD-PhD program, students first complete two years of medical school, then switch to completing their PhD for 4-5 years, and finally complete the last two years of medical school. Given the immense time commitment, it was incredibly important to Autumn that she pick a program close to her community. Furthermore, she wanted to ensure there were many labs at the school working on her topic of interest. Having spent her time in undergrad focused on the brain during aging, she hoped to switch to the other bookend of the brain’s life: early development. UC Irvine was the perfect fit, both professionally and personally, and she eagerly accepted their MD-PhD program’s offer.
At Irvine, she chose to do her PhD in the lab of Dr. Tallie Baram, whose lab focuses on pediatric neurology and early life stress. Autumn’s PhD began with developing a rodent model for chronic early life stress, in which the mother rat was not given enough resources (nesting material) to properly care for her pups for their first week of life. This led to erratic and fragmented maternal caregiving behavior which, in turn, induced chronic stress in the pups. Autumn sought to study how this type of early life stress affected cognitive function, specifically in the hippocampus. She found that young mice exposed to this paradigm had deficits in hippocampal-dependent long term memory and impairments in synaptic plasticity. Furthermore, she found that blocking corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH), a hormone that triggers a stress response, reduced the typical behavioral changes that result from this early life stress.
Upon the conclusion of her PhD, Autumn returned to medical school for the final two years. This was a profound shift; in her PhD she was expected to delve deep into one topic, whereas in medical school she was asked to quickly learn and then apply a wide range of medical knowledge in the clinic. Autumn found the basic biology perspective she had gained in her PhD to be helpful in her clinical work, affirming that she had made the right decision in pursuing an MD-PhD. Seeing the value of these two trainings together, she opted for a combined residency/postdoc at Stanford and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital upon completing medical school.
At Stanford, she joined the lab of Dr. Tony Wyss-Coray. However, as part of her fellowship, Autumn had only nine months of protected research time, where she had no clinical responsibilities. With that time, Autumn decided she wanted to learn how to perform and analyze RNA-sequencing experiments. Her project focused on metachromatic leukodystrophy, a disorder characterized by abnormal microglia that causes atypical myelination. She hoped to understand, and later target, the immune response triggered by the abnormal microglia. This, they hypothesized, would reduce atypical myelination. Before they could develop these interventions, they needed to characterize the transcriptome of the microglia associated with this condition. By undertaking this project, Autumn learned how to use the relatively new technology of RNA-sequencing, which she planned to bring to her future lab.
With the intention of becoming a faculty member at a research institution, she applied for and received a K12 (a career development award meant to help postdocs transition into faculty positions) based on her RNA-sequencing project. This grant provided funding for her new lab, and she was able to return to UC Irvine, this time as a tenure-track faculty member. In her new position, Autumn has returned to studying the interaction between brain development and exercise, this time leveraging the neurobiology skills she gained throughout her PhD and postdoctoral work. In order to learn more genomics techniques required to answer her questions, she enrolled in an intensive course at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories. Armed with a newfound expertise in the methodology of genomics and epigenetics, Autumn returned to her lab with many new experimental models and ideas.
In her lab, Autumn combines the study of epigenetics and transcriptomics with research on the impact of early life exercise. To do this, she introduces very young mice to a cage with an exercise wheel and tracks how much each mouse runs. She found that animals who exercise early in life have better long-term memory function and increased long term potentiation in their hippocampus. Furthermore, by analyzing the transcriptome and epigenetic signature of the neurons collected from these mice, she identified a cluster of genes that exhibit exercise-dependent changes in transcription when a mouse is forming a new memory. Interestingly, a subset of these genes also show changes in histone modifications after exercise, suggesting exercise changes the genes’ regulation. She hopes that by delving into these genes and experimenting with the timing of exercise onset, she can learn more about the application of exercise as a therapeutic technique in pediatric neurology.
Aside from running her lab, Autumn also sees patients in a neurology clinic once a week, and works in the hospital once every few months. Although having so many different parts to her job is challenging, Autumn is motivated by the translational nature of her work, allowing her to bridge her role in the medical clinic and her basic research. Autumn emphasizes how her support system is critical to her being able to balance her many responsibilities. She also lives by her research creed - in her spare time, she is a dancer and a yoga enthusiast, incorporating movement and exercise into her everyday life.
Find out more about Autumn and her lab’s research here.
Listen to Rianne’s full interview with Autumn on Februrary 24, 2023 below!
