Dr Arpan Mehta

Arpan was a Rowling Scholar (2017-2021) who secured a prestigious MRC Clinical Research Training Fellowship to undertake a PhD in laboratory research into motor neuron disease, supervised by Professors Siddharthan Chandran and Giles Hardingham. Arpan graduated from the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford, and completed his neurology clinical training in Oxford and Queen Square, London, in 2024.

Arpan's PhD project, jointly funded by the Medical Research Council and the Motor Neurone Disease Association, examined the most common known genetic mutation in motor neuron disease, the C9orf72 repeat expansion mutation. He exploited recent advances in patient-derived stem cell modelling and gene-editing to better understand the molecular mechanisms underlying MND. The focus of his research was on axon and metabolic impairments.