Mengwen Zhu

Program: Neurosciences

Current advisor: Adam Kepecs, PhD

Undergraduate university: University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2022

Enrollment year: 2023

Research summary
Neuroimmune circuits that mediate fatigue in endometriosis

Endometriosis is a chronic inflammatory disease characterized by ectopic endometrial tissue and affects ~10% of women of reproductive age. In addition to pain and infertility, a substantial subset of patients report persistent fatigue, yet this neuropsychiatric comorbidity remains sparsely studied and largely overlooked. I hypothesize that fatigue in endometriosis, as in other chronic inflammatory states, is driven by a humoral cytokine–to–circumventricular organ (CVO) signaling axis that engages defined brain circuits, rather than by nonspecific sickness or malaise. To test this, my research in the Kepecs lab focuses on dissecting a neuroimmune circuit linking peripheral inflammation to motivational deficits in a murine model of endometriosis. I will combine quantitative behavioral assays, immunofluorescence and RNAscope, brain-wide mapping of protein targets, multiplex cytokine profiling, as well as neural circuit recording and manipulation to delineate how lesion-derived immune signals are transformed into mesolimbic circuit changes that produce fatigue-like behavior.

Graduate publications