Meet Estherina
Name: Estherina Trachtenberg
Research topic: The Influence of the Social Environment on Neuro-Immune Status in Rats and Health and Well-being in Humans
Field: Neuroscience, Sagol School of Neuroscience
Estherina Trachtenberg was fascinated by science and the human body from a young age. She completed a BA in nursing, during which she discovered her true passion for research and the human mind. Working with young lymphoma patients, she noticed their cognitive deterioration, an area not yet studied in young cancer survivors. This led her to pursue an M.Sc. at the Technion, conducting neurocognitive studies on “chemo-brain” in young lymphoma patients, resulting in two first-author papers. She then worked for a year in Cambridge, UK, conducting psycho-cognitive research in OCD.
Trachtenberg was interested in the field of psychoneuroimmunology due to her clinical background, and therefore decided to pursue her doctorate at the Sagol School of Neuroscience, where she was awarded the Milner Foundation PhD fellowship. Now, she has completed her Ph.D. and is starting her postdoctoral research at the University of Cambridge after being awarded the Blavatnik Fellowship.
Her research aims to uncover how social isolation influences immunity, especially within the context of cancer in rats. "I pioneered and paved a new research topic in both of my labs, exploring the link between the social environment and the immune system. I brought evidence of the critical impact of SI on rats’ immunity and welfare. Today, several other students continue to study this topic, and I believe I have increased awareness of the importance of isolation in rodents within the psychoneuroimmunology community and in our department," she says.
"This interest stemmed from my experience as a nurse with oncological patients, where I noticed that those without social support had worse cancer outcomes. This research topic was new to our labs and largely understudied when I started, prior to the COVID-19 outbreak. My main findings revealed that SI profoundly affected body weight negatively, increased metastases and mortality, and impacted peripheral immunity."
