Cagla Eroglu

Cagla Eroglu is a Turkish neuroscientist and associate professor of cell biology and neurobiology at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina and an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

[3] Eroglu's Ph.D. was supported by the European Molecular Biology Laboratory Ph.D. program as she studied under the mentorship of Irmgard Sinning, whose lab moved from EMBL to Heidelberg University in 2000.

[5] She found that when mGluRs are associated with cholesterol rich lipid rafts within the membrane, they exist in a high affinity state for glutamate.

Eroglu, along with her colleagues in the Barres Lab, brought to light the critical and understudied role glial cells play in shaping synapses and neural circuits during development.

[6] Eroglu and her team found that an astrocyte derived factor, called Thrombospondin, is important in promoting synaptogenesis in the central nervous system.

[7] Her findings showed both the role that astrocyte secreted factors play in specifically excitatory synapse formation, as well as the potential therapeutic mechanism why which gabapentin is able to mediate analgesia and prevent seizures.

[7] Another discovery that Eroglu made while in the Barres Lab was the identification and function of hevin and SPARC, two astrocyte-secreted proteins, in the regulation of excitatory synapse development.

[14] Eroglu and a team of researchers were interested in exploring the therapeutic potential of human Umbilical Tissue Derived cells (hUTCs) in synaptogenesis.