Margo Heston, PhD

Margo Heston, PhD

Postdoctoral Scholar
Fields of Interest: 
Disparities

Dr. Margo Heston is a postdoctoral scholar and an NIH F99/K00 fellow funded through the NIH Blueprint and BRAIN Initiative Diversity Specialized Predoctoral to Postdoctoral Advancement in Neuroscience (D-SPAN) program.

Heston focuses her research on the social exposome as a contributor to the timing of biomarker and dementia onset in Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD). Her overarching goal is to mitigate disparities in ADRD by identifying mechanisms that link life-course experiences with biomolecular events in pathologic brain aging. In her work she combines clinical, imaging, and fluid biomarker data with place-based measures of the built environment.

Prior to joining the UCSF Memory and Aging Center, Heston completed her PhD degree at the University of Wisconsin (UW)-Madison where she investigated how preclinical trajectories of AD biomarkers are affected by changes in gut microbiome composition, inflammatory environment, and gut/host metabolism, as well as the contributing effect of neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage. As a postdoctoral fellow at UW-Madison, she gained expertise in temporal biomarker modeling approaches to study biological and multilevel social determinants of health that impact the timing of positron emission tomography (PET) biomarker onset and the time to subsequent dementia.

Publications: 

Gut Microbiome Compositional and Functional Features Associate with Alzheimer's Disease Pathology.

medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences

Kang JW, Khatib LA, Heston MB, Dilmore AH, Labus JS, Deming Y, Schimmel L, Blach C, McDonald D, Gonzalez A, Bryant M, Sanders K, Schwartz A, Ulland TK, Johnson SC, Asthana S, Carlsson CM, Chin NA, Blennow K, Zetterberg H, Rey FE, Alzheimer Gut Microbiome Project Consortium, Kaddurah-Daouk R, Knight R, Bendlin BB

Older adults at greater risk for Alzheimer's disease show stronger associations between sleep apnea severity in REM sleep and verbal memory.

Alzheimer's research & therapy

Lui KK, Dave A, Sprecher KE, Chappel-Farley MG, Riedner BA, Heston MB, Taylor CE, Carlsson CM, Okonkwo OC, Asthana S, Johnson SC, Bendlin BB, Mander BA, Benca RM

Whole-body metabolic modelling reveals microbiome and genomic interactions on reduced urine formate levels in Alzheimer's disease.

Scientific reports

Martinelli F, Heinken A, Henning AK, Ulmer MA, Hensen T, González A, Arnold M, Asthana S, Budde K, Engelman CD, Estaki M, Grabe HJ, Heston MB, Johnson S, Kastenmüller G, Martino C, McDonald D, Rey FE, Kilimann I, Peters O, Wang X, Spruth EJ, Schneider A, Fliessbach K, Wiltfang J, Hansen N, Glanz W, Buerger K, Janowitz D, Laske C, Munk MH, Spottke A, Roy N, Nauck M, Teipel S, Knight R, Kaddurah-Daouk RF, Bendlin BB, Hertel J, Thiele I

Older adults at greater risk for Alzheimer's disease show stronger associations between sleep apnea severity and verbal memory.

Research square

Lui K, Dave A, Sprecher K, Chappel-Farley M, Riedner B, Heston M, Taylor C, Carlsson C, Okonkwo O, Asthana S, Johnson S, Bendlin B, Mander B, Benca R

Gut inflammation associated with age and Alzheimer's disease pathology: a human cohort study.

Scientific reports

Heston MB, Hanslik KL, Zarbock KR, Harding SJ, Davenport-Sis NJ, Kerby RL, Chin N, Sun Y, Hoeft A, Deming Y, Vogt NM, Betthauser TJ, Johnson SC, Asthana S, Kollmorgen G, Suridjan I, Wild N, Zetterberg H, Blennow K, Rey FE, Bendlin BB, Ulland TK

Inflammation, tau pathology, and synaptic integrity associated with sleep spindles and memory prior to β-amyloid positivity.

Sleep

Mander BA, Dave A, Lui KK, Sprecher KE, Berisha D, Chappel-Farley MG, Chen IY, Riedner BA, Heston M, Suridjan I, Kollmorgen G, Zetterberg H, Blennow K, Carlsson CM, Okonkwo OC, Asthana S, Johnson SC, Bendlin BB, Benca RM

An mHealth App (Speech Banana) for Auditory Training: App Design and Development Study.

JMIR mHealth and uHealth

Ratnanather JT, Bhattacharya R, Heston MB, Song J, Fernandez LR, Lim HS, Lee SW, Tam E, Yoo S, Bae SH, Lam I, Jeon HW, Chang SA, Koo JW