Metabolic signatures of ferritin and TDP-43 co-pathology provide a mechanistic basis for stratified therapeutic approaches in ALS
2026 – Preprint
Spence, H., Read, F., Waldron, F., Gregory, J. BioRxiv
[ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.03.13.711539
Amygdala TDP-43 pathology is associated with behavioural dysfunction and ferritin accumulation in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis 2026 – Published Rifai, O. M., Waldron, F., O’shaughnessy, J., Read, F. L., Gilodi, M., Pastore, A., Shneider, N., Tartaglia, G. G., Zacco, E., Gregory, J., Spence, H. Brain Communications, vol. 8, no. 2, fcag104 [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/braincomms/fcag104 [OPEN ACCESS] http://aura.abdn.ac.uk/bitstreams/026d5004-b64a-43b0-b54a-5f4d1cd66c3e/download
Brain Iron as a Surrogate Biomarker of Pathological TDP-43 Identifies Brain Region-Specific Signatures in Ageing, Alzheimer’s Disease and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis 2025 – Preprint Spence, H., Waldron, F., Taso, O. S., Read, F., Sinha, I. R., Irwin, K. E., Wong, P. C., Ling, J. P., Gregory, J. BioRxiv [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.10.02.680028
Skin TDP-43 pathology as a candidate biomarker for predicting amyotrophic lateral sclerosis decades prior to motor symptom onset 2025 – Preprint Waldron, F., Langerova, T., Rahmanova, A., Read, F., Spence, H., Roberts, K., MacLeod, A., Pattle, S. B., Hanna, K., Gregory, J. BioRxiv [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.04.10.648122
Large-scale RNA-Seq mining reveals ciclopirox olamine induces TDP-43 cryptic exons
2025 – Published
Sinha, I. R., Sandal, P. S., Spence, H., Burns, G. D., Mallika, A. P., Abbasinejad, F., Irwin, K. E., Cruz, A. L. F., Wang, V., Marx, S. R., Rodríguez, J. L., Langmead, B., Gregory, J. M., Wong, P. C., Ling, J. P.
Nature Communications, vol. 16, 6878
[ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-62004-5
[OPEN ACCESS] http://aura.abdn.ac.uk/bitstreams/241c593f-ccbf-45d4-87a8-fc457d6c5c13/download
Improving ALS detection and cognitive impairment stratification with attention-enhanced deep learning models
2025 – Published
Xia, Y., Gregory, J. M., Waldron, F. M., Spence, H., Vallejo, M.
Scientific Reports, vol. 15, no. 1, 7045
[ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-90881-9
[OPEN ACCESS] http://aura.abdn.ac.uk/bitstreams/eeb78e48-3c62-40f6-bd7d-3cd12b732c1b/download
Associations between sex, systemic iron and inflammatory status and subcortical brain iron
2024 – Published
Spence, H., Mengoa-Fleming, S., Sneddon, A., McNeil, C., Waiter, G.
European Journal of Neuroscience, vol. 60, no. 5
[ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ejn.16467
[OPEN ACCESS] http://aura.abdn.ac.uk/bitstreams/7b060f78-0365-42f1-8b9a-945b961fc969/download
RNA aptamer reveals nuclear TDP-43 pathology is an early aggregation event that coincides with STMN-2 cryptic splicing and precedes clinical manifestation in ALS
2024 – Published
Spence, H., Waldron, F., Saleeb, R. S., Brown, A., Rifai, O. M., Gilodi, M., Read, F., Nellany, K., Milne, G., Wilkinson, D., O’shaughnessy, J., Pastore, A., Fratta, P., Shneider, N., Tartaglia, G. G., Zacco, E., Horrocks, M. H., Gregory, J.
Acta Neuropathologica, vol. 147, 50
[ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00401-024-02705-1
[OPEN ACCESS] http://aura.abdn.ac.uk/bitstreams/d845cb9c-8ee2-40f5-850c-0369bf8400e0/download
SOP and tick-sheet for using TDP-43 RNA aptamer (TDP-43APT) to detect pathological TDP-43 in FFPE-preserved human tissue, as described in Spence and Waldron et al., 2024 (Acta Neuropathologica) v1
2024 – Published
Waldron, F. M., Gregory, J., Spence, H.
protocols.io.
[ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.17504/protocols.io.eq2lyjo4mlx9/v1
Cognition and brain iron deposition in whole grey matter regions and hippocampal subfields
2022 – Published
Spence, H., McNeil, C. J., Waiter, G. D.
European Journal of Neuroscience, vol. 56, no. 11, pp. 6039-6054
[ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ejn.15838
[OPEN ACCESS] http://aura.abdn.ac.uk/bitstreams/9579080c-5665-42fd-b1a1-190a8b3844ea/download
The impact of brain iron accumulation on cognition: A systematic review
2020 – Published
Spence, H., Waiter, G., McNeil, C.
PloS ONE, vol. 15, no. 10, pp. e0240697
[ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0240697
[OPEN ACCESS] http://aura.abdn.ac.uk/bitstreams/3575e466-6599-43c6-abf1-823a49a70535/download
The Spence Lab 