ISMND

Dr. Guojun Bu is the Lo Ka Chung Charitable Foundation Professor of Science and a Chair Professor in the Division of Life Science at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He is a world-renowned neuroscientist and former Chair, Department of Neuroscience at Mayo Clinic. His other career appointments include Professor in Cell Biology and Neuroscience at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and Chief Scientific Officer at SciNeuro Pharmaceuticals.

Dr. Bu is a leader in the field of apoE and apoE receptors, which play critical roles in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). His primary interest is to understand why APOE4 is a strong risk factor for AD and how this pathway can be targeted for therapy. His interests also extend to addressing the protective mechanisms of APOE2 and APOE rare variants. Among the pathogenic pathways contributing to aging and Alzheimer’s disease, Dr. Bu’s work addresses the roles of brain lipid metabolism, neuronal signaling, neuroimmune focusing on TREM2 and APOE, mechanisms of proteinopathy, and cerebrovascular integrity and function.

He has published over 350 articles with >40,000 citations and an H-Index of 115 (Google Scholar). He has been named as a “Highly Cited Researcher” by the Web of Science for the past several years. Dr. Bu has received numerous honors and awards including the Zenith Fellows Award from the Alzheimer’s Association, the Established Investigator Award from the American Heart Association, a MERIT award from NIH, the Investigator of the Year award from the Mayo Clinic, and the MetLife Foundation Award for Medical Research in Alzheimer’s disease. He is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Founding Editor and Editor-in-Chief of Molecular Neurodegeneration, an Associate Editor for Science Advances, and is on the editorial board for Neuron.

Dr. Inhee Mook-Jung is a Professor of the Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences at the College of Medicine, Seoul National University. She earned a Bachelor of Science in molecular biology from Seoul National University in 1986 and a Doctor of Philosophy in neuroscience from the University of Arizona in 1995 (USA). Since the year 2020, Dr. Mook-Jung has served as the director of the Korea Dementia Research Center (KDRC).

Dr. Mook-Jung has been researching the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease (AD), more specifically, investigating the effects of amyloid beta and tau on the normal physiology of brain cells (astrocytes, neurons, microglia, and endothelial cells of the blood-brain barrier). Additionally, she is intrigued by the interaction between the peripheral immune system and the central nervous system in AD. Together with clinical specialists, she has also investigated therapeutic targets and blood biomarkers for the early detection of AD.

In addition to the Global Creative Researcher Award from Seoul National University (2013) and the Korea Loreal-UNESCO Woman Scientist Award (2015), she has received numerous honors. More than 210 SCI papers and 37 patents are in her oeuvre.

Colin Masters has focused his career on research in Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative diseases, including Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Over the last 40 years, his work is widely acknowledged as having had a major influence on Alzheimer’s disease research worldwide, particularly the collaborative studies conducted with Konrad Beyreuther in which they discovered the proteolytic neuronal origin of the Aβ amyloid protein, which causes Alzheimer’s disease. This work has led to the continued development of diagnostics and therapeutic strategies and has been recognized by the receipt of many international awards. More recently, he has focused on describing the natural history of Alzheimer’s disease as a necessary preparatory step for disease-modifying therapies.

His achievements have been recognized by the receipt of many international awards, including a Lifetime Achievement Award in Alzheimer’s Disease Research from the Alzheimer’s Association, and the Grand Hamdan International Award for Medical Sciences in the field of Molecular and Cellular Pathology of Neurological Disorders.

Ted Dawson received his medical degree and Ph.D. in pharmacology from the University of Utah School of Medicine. He then completed an internship in medicine at the University of Utah Affiliated Hospitals before going to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania for a neurology residency. Next, he came to the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine where he completed a fellowship in neuroscience and a senior clinical fellowship in movement disorders.

His laboratory focuses on neurodegenerative diseases. He pioneered the role of nitric oxide (NO) in neuronal injury in stroke, glutamate excitotoxicity and Parkinson’s disease. He elucidated the molecular mechanisms by which NO kills neurons through the actions of poly (ADP-ribose) (PAR) polymerase and discovered a unique cell death pathway designated parthanatos. His laboratory has made important discoveries on how neurons die in genetic and sporadic models of Parkinson’s disease. His discoveries are enabling clinical strategies for disease modifying therapies for Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease as well as other neurodegenerative diseases.

His honors include the Derek Denny-Brown Young Neurological Scholar Award, the Paul Beeson Physician Faculty Scholar Award, the Santiago Grisolia Medal, and a Javits Neuroscience Investigator Award.

Originally trained as a neurologist and neuropathologist, Takeshi Iwatsubo has contributed to the studies of human neurodegenerative disorders, especially Alzheimer’s (AD) and Parkinson's disease, using multidisciplinary approaches.

Since the early histopathological discovery that Ab42 is the initially and predominantly deposited amyloid b species in senile plaque amyloid using end-specific antibodies, his team has extensively incorporated biochemical and molecular/cell biological approaches. He has demonstrated that mutations in presenilin genes cause familial AD by increasing the production of Ab42, and extended these lines of research towards the elucidation of the process of g-secretase complex formation. He has also developed a method to isolate and purify Lewy bodies from human brains and demonstrated that a-synuclein, especially a hyperphosphorylated form, is a component of Lewy bodies. Also, he has identified a novel type of membrane-bound collagen as one of the major components of senile plaque amyloid in AD, which was named "CLAC". On the clinical front, he is heading the Japanese AD Neuroimaging Initiative (J-ADNI) project, aimed at establishing standard surrogate markers for clinical trials of disease-modifying therapies for AD.

X: @DimitriKrainc

Prior to joining Northwestern, Dimitri Krainc spent 20 years at Harvard serving on the neurology faculty at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, where he also completed a neurology residency and a fellowship in movement disorders. He then served on the neurology faculty at MGH and Harvard Medical School until 2013 when he relocated to Chicago.

The overarching goal of his scientific work has been to define key molecular pathways in the pathogenesis of neurodegeneration and to uncover novel targets for therapeutic development. He has focused on pathogenic mechanisms that are commonly altered in neurodegenerative disorders such as deficient degradation of aggregation-prone proteins and mitochondrial dysfunction. As a general strategy, he studies rare genetic diseases with mutations in genes that play a role in these key mechanisms and pathways. Models of Huntington’s, Parkinson’s and Gaucher’s disease have been utilized to examine if activation of cellular degradation pathways can lead to neuroprotection. To validate and study these findings in human neurons, he utilizes induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS) generated by reprogramming of patient-specific skin fibroblasts. These iPS cells are differentiated into specific neuronal subtypes in order to characterize the interplay of genetic, epigenetic and environmental factors in disease pathogenesis. The goal of these studies is to develop targeted therapies for Parkinson’s and related neurodegenerative disorders.

Dr. Krainc is the principal founder of two biotech companies focused on the therapeutic development for neurodegenerative diseases, and he also serves as Venture Partner at OrbiMed in NYC.

Henrietta Nielsen received her PhD in Medicine from Lund University in the Department of Clinical Sciences (Sweden). She then moved on for postdoctoral studies at the VU Medical Center in Amsterdam (The Netherlands), where she investigated the ability of primary human glial cells (astrocytes and microglia) isolated from autopsy-derived brain tissues, to ingest the amyloid-beta peptide in the presence/absence of various amyloid-associated proteins like apolipoproteins E and J. She received further training as a postdoctoral fellow and assistant researcher at Lund University (Sweden) where she spear-headed fluid biomarker discovery efforts including cerebrospinal fluid and blood samples from patients with mild cognitive impairment, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. After working nearly four years at the Department of Neuroscience at Mayo Clinic Florida (US), she accepted a position as an assistant professor and principal investigator in neurochemistry at Stockholm University (Sweden). At Stockholm University she was recently given tenure as an associate professor in neurochemistry, and she now splits her time between tenured positions at Stockholm University and Roskilde University, Denmark.

Her laboratory 'Translational Neurodegeneration Group' has a major focus on investigating biological mechanisms promoting/leading to neurodegenerative dementia. As the strongest genetic risk factor for not only Alzheimer's disease but also dementia with Lewy bodies the Nielsen laboratory devotes a lot of time to better understand the biological processes linking APOE4 to the increased risk of neurodegenerative diseases. With nearly 12 years of research experience and extensive expertise in the field of neurodegenerative diseases she serves as a senior editor for Molecular Neurodegeneration, an associate editor for the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease and an academic editor for Plos One. In 2021, she became President of the International Society for Molecular Neurodegeneration (ISMND).

Dr. Sang Won Seo is the Director of Alzheimer’s disease convergence research center and Professor at the Department of Neurology, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Samsung Medical Center. His lab studies the relationship among Alzheimer’ disease, small vessel disease, and cognition. Multimodal neuroimaging methods and pathology are employed, including amyloid PET/Tau PET/MRI/fMRI/DTI. He is also interested in multi-omics including genomics. His ultimate research goal is to explore the interactions between neuroimaging, genotype, cognition, and disease for early detection, prognosis, differential diagnosis, and treatment planning using artificial intelligence.

He has published ~350 papers in international peer-reviewed journals including JAMA psychiatry, Annals of Neurology, Brain, Alzheimer and dementia, Neurology, and so on.

Alison Goate has worked on the genetics of neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD) since 1987 and is the founding director of the Ronald M. Loeb Center for Alzheimer’s Disease at Mount Sinai.
Over the last three decades, Dr. Goate has been part of many gene finding teams that have successfully identified disease-causing variants for both AD and FTD. While working at Imperial College in London, she reported the first mutation to cause familial Alzheimer’s disease, and her early studies at Washington University in St. Louis identified a genetic mutation in Colombian families that are now part of the Alzheimer’s Prevention Initiative clinical trial. Her lab was also part of the team that first reported MAPT mutations in FTD.

Dr. Goate is also a leader in the study of late onset AD genetics using integrative genomic approaches to identify novel genetic risk factors. Her work led to the identification of Trem2 as a risk factor for AD and has highlighted the enrichment of AD risk variants in microglial enhancers, regulatory elements in DNA that control gene expression in immune cells of the brain. Dr. Goate is now building upon these insights using genome editing in induced pluripotent stem cells to understand the molecular mechanisms of disease and to develop novel therapeutics.

Dr. Goate has received the Potamkin Award from the American Academy of Neurology, the Khalid Iqbal Lifetime Achievement Award from the Alzheimer’s Association, the Rainwater Prize, and the MetLife Award for her research on AD. She was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2012, and a fellow of the National Academy of Medicine in 2016.

Sam Gandy, MD, PhD, is Mount Sinai Professor of Alzheimer's Disease Research, Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry, Associate Director of the Mount Sinai Alzheimer's Disease Research Center in New York City, and Chairman Emeritus of the National Medical and Scientific Advisory Council of the Alzheimer's Association. Dr. Gandy is an international expert in the metabolism of the sticky substance called amyloid that clogs the brain in patients with Alzheimer's. In 1989, Gandy and his team discovered the first drugs that could lower formation of amyloid. Dr. Gandy has written more than 150 original papers, chapters and reviews on this topic. Dr. Gandy has received continuous NIH funding for his research on amyloid metabolism since 1986. Dr. Gandy is a member of the Faculty of 1000 Biology and serves as a Consulting Editor for The Journal of Clinical Investigation. He also serves on the Editorial Advisory Boards for the journals Public Library of Science-Medicine (PLoSM), Neurodegenerative Diseases, and Current Alzheimer Research. He is Associate Editor of the journals Molecular Neurodegeneration and Alzheimer Disease and Associated Disorders. From 1996-2006, Dr Gandy was Director of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories/Wellcome Trust Annual Summer Course on the Neurobiology of Human Neurological Disorders. In 2000, he became chief organizer for the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories Bi-Annual Winter Biotechnology Conference on Therapeutic Opportunities in Neurodegenerative Diseases and continues in that role until 2010. Dr. Gandy has appeared numerous times on television and in print, including: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/health/july-dec06/alzheimers_07-26.html Jim Lehrer Newshour http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/06/07/earlyshow/health/main621456.shtml?source=search_story The CBS Early Show http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/26184891/vp/25913158#25913158 NBC Nightly News http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=7344258 ABC News On Call In May 2009, Dr. Gandy was featured with other prominent research scientists as GQ's "Rockstars of Science". http://icahn.mssm.edu/vgn_lnk/Regular%20Content/File/Faculty%20Profile%20Pdfs/RockstarsGQ.pdf View the PDF. In addition, Dr. Gandy has spoken before Congress on several occasions (Click to view the http://icahn.mssm.edu/vgn_lnk/Regular%20Content/File/Faculty%20Profile%20Pdfs/Sam%20Gandy%20Statement%20to%20Congress%205_3_05.pdf PDF of transcript of 5/3/05, http://icahn.mssm.edu/vgn_lnk/Regular%20Content/File/Faculty%20Profile%20Pdfs/Sam%20Gandy%20Statement%20to%20Congress%203_20_07.pdf PDF of transcript of 3/20/07) Dr. Gandy received both his MD and PhD at the Medical University of South Carolina. He completed an internship in Internal Medicine at the Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons and a residency in Neurology at Cornell University Medical College. Dr. Gandy completed postdoctoral training at The Rockefeller University, where, in 1991, he was appointed assistant professor in the laboratory of Paul Greengard, 2000 Laureate of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. From 1992-1997, Gandy was Associate Professor of Neurology and Neuroscience at Cornell University Medical College. From 1997-2001, he was Professor of Psychiatry and of Cell Biology at New York University and The Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research. From 2001-2007, he served as Paul C. Brucker, M.D., Professor of Neuroscience at Jefferson Medical College and Founding Director of the Farber Institute for Neurosciences. In 2007, he assumed his current post as Mount Sinai Professor of Alzheimer's Disease Research at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Clinical Focus http://www.mountsinai.org/patient-care/health-library/diseases-and-conditions/alzheimers-disease Alzheimer's Disease http://www.mountsinai.org/patient-care/health-library/diseases-and-conditions/dementia Dementia Multi-Disciplinary Training Area Neuroscience [NEU] Education MD, Medical University of South Carolina Internship, Internal Medicine, Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons Residency, Neurology, New York Hospital Cornell University Med Ctr.

Seung Hyun Kim earned his degree in Medicine at Hanyang University and completed his Doctorate at the same institute. From 1999 to 2001, he worked at Baylor College of Medicine, in the field of ALS as a postdoc fellow und er the supervision of Prof. Staney Appel. He developed JPI-289, novel PARP inhibitor, for treatment of acute ischemic stroke, currently in Phase II clinical trial. In 2015, his therapeutic strategy using autologous Bone Marrow originated Mesenchymal Stem Cell Therapy for ALS was approved as an orphan drug, which had been conducted by Korean NIH research project. He put the autologous stem cell therapy into clinical practice to treat ALS and is now conducting translational research for development of personalized medicine based on unique genetic background of Korean and Asian population. With these works, he received 2016 Secret of life Award from Catholic Foundation, and Award from Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning.

X: @CharlotteTeuni1

Charlotte Teunissen aims to improve care of patients with neurological diseases by developing body fluid biomarkers for diagnosis, stratification, prognosis and monitoring treatment responses. Studies of her research group span the entire spectrum of biomarker development, starting with biomarker identification, followed by assay development and validation, and extensive clinical validation to ultimately implement novel biomarkers in clinical practice.

She is responsible for the Alzheimer Center Amsterdam body fluid and leads several international biomarker networks, such as the CSF Society and the Alzheimer Association-Global Biomarker Standardization consortium, and the recently founded Coral proteomics consortium. She is the coordinator of the Marie Curie MIRIADE project, aiming to train 15 novel researchers to accelerate dementia biomarker development.

Dr. Seong-Ho Koh earned his Ph.D. from the Department of Neurology at Hanyang University's College of Medicine. He furthered his training in Department of Neurology and Radiology at Harvard University, USA, as a Postdoctoral Fellow between 2013 and 2014, and in Department of Immunology, Genetics, and Pathology, Science for Life Laboratory, Uppsala University, Sweden, as a Visiting Scholar in 2016. He currently holds a Professorship in the Department of Neurology at the College of Medicine, Hanyang University, Korea.

As a neurologist, he specializes in treating Alzheimer's disease and is actively engaged in research on novel therapeutic approaches and blood biomarkers for early Alzheimer's diagnosis. His prolific research career includes over 220 peer-reviewed publications in prestigious journals such as Nature Medicine, JAMA Neurology, Alzheimer’s Disease and Dementia, Brain Behavior and Immunity, among others. He has also been honored with numerous accolades, including the Prime Minister’s Award in 2023.

Dr. Riqiang Yan received his PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Kentucky. He then continued his training at University of Kentucky as Medical Center Academic Year Fellowship, Rosita Winston Foundation in Biomedical Research Postdoctoral Fellow, and the Aaron Diamond Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow. He is now a Professor and the Chair of the Department of Neuroscience at the University of Connecticut.

Dr Yan discovered BACE1, an enzyme that plays a crucial role in enabling the formation of beta amyloid, by employing a novel bioinformatic approach coupled with enzymatic characterization. After this original discovery, he conducted extensive cellular and molecular characterizations of both BACE1 and BACE2. His lab has been one of the first to demonstrate how BACE1 and BACE2 differentially cleave amyloid precursor protein (APP). He has also studied biological functions of BACE1 in vivo and found central and peripheral hypomyelination, spontaneous epileptic seizures, increased hippocampal astrogenesis, and decreased neurogenesis in BACE1-null mice. Additionally, he discovered that neuregulin-1, neuregulin-3, Jag1, and Jag2 are all BACE1 physiological substrates.

During his career, Dr Yan has been the recipient of many awards such as the MetLife Award for Medical Research (MetLife Foundation) due to his BACE1 discovery, the Morris R. and Ruth V. Graham Endowed Chair in Biomedical Sciences, and the Ralph Wilson Award.

Dr. Yong-Keun Jung received his PhD in Molecular Pharmacology from Albert Einstein College of Medicine (1993), NY. He then continued his training at Harvard Medical School as a Postdoctoral Fellow (1996). He was a professor and Chairman in the Department of Life Science at Gwanju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST) (2005) and transitioned to Seoul National University and is now a Professor in the School of Biological Science at Seoul National University, Seoul.

He has worked on the neurotoxicity of amyloid peptides and tau oligomers for more than 20 years, and identified many crucial factors, including receptors, signal modulators and novel regulators, with genome-wide functional screening employing cDNA expression libraries. Twenty years ago, he showed that oligomers of amyloid peptides and caspase-cleaved forms of tau are neurotoxic and cause memory deficits in vitro and in vivo. Since then, he has elucidated molecular mechanism underlying the neurotoxicity by identifying new mediators, including FcgRIIb, ALK, RAGE, E2-25K, SERP1, v-ATPase complexes and S5b etc. Recently, he has focused on the role of impaired proteasome and lysosome in the proteopathy of neurodegenerative disease and aging using functional screen and mouse model systems. His lab has identified E2-25K, S5b and V-ATPase as new pathogenic modulators of proteasome and lysosomes and developed new therapeutic opportunity.

During his career, Dr. Jung has been director in BK21 program, Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Bio-MAX Institute at GIST and Seoul National University and a president in the Korea Society of Neurodegenerative Disease (KSND).

X: @mengwang939

Meng Wang and her team use multidisciplinary approaches to study metabolite-directed communication systems that promote the healthy survival of an organism. Her team has uncovered the role of metabolite signaling in organelles, microbiome-host interactions, and olfactory regulation; has identified effective metabolites for improving an organism’s health span, or how long an organism remains healthy and free of disease; and has developed innovative imaging platforms for in vivo metabolite fingerprinting to determine the distribution and concentration of metabolites in an organism at a given time.

She and her team use the model organism C. elegans to study changes over the organism’s lifespan. They employ cutting-edge tools to monitor the metabolic status of the organism as a whole and image the metabolic state of the organism throughout its lifespan to look for changes over time in different cell types and organelles.

Dr. Inhee Mook-Jung is a Professor of the Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences at the College of Medicine, Seoul National University. She earned a Bachelor of Science in molecular biology from Seoul National University in 1986 and a Doctor of Philosophy in neuroscience from the University of Arizona in 1995 (USA). Since the year 2020, Dr. Mook-Jung has served as the director of the Korea Dementia Research Center (KDRC).

Dr. Mook-Jung has been researching the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease (AD), more specifically, investigating the effects of amyloid beta and tau on the normal physiology of brain cells (astrocytes, neurons, microglia, and endothelial cells of the blood-brain barrier). Additionally, she is intrigued by the interaction between the peripheral immune system and the central nervous system in AD. Together with clinical specialists, she has also investigated therapeutic targets and blood biomarkers for the early detection of AD.

In addition to the Global Creative Researcher Award from Seoul National University (2013) and the Korea Loreal-UNESCO Woman Scientist Award (2015), she has received numerous honors. More than 210 SCI papers and 37 patents are in her oeuvre.

Sangram Sisodia’s research has focused on understanding the cellular and molecular biology of the amyloid precursor protein (APP) and presenilins (PS1 and PS2), polypeptides that are mutated in pedigrees with familial Alzheimer’s Disease (FAD). Among his many notable contributions in the field, his group was amongst the first to develop and characterize mice expressing FAD-linked variants of PS1 and APP that exhibit amyloid plaques in the brain and that develop memory deficits. These models have been invaluable for understanding neuronal vulnerability, and the impact of environmental enrichment and exercise in modulating the deposition of amyloid in plaques and adult neurogenesis. More recent studies have focused on the impact of the microbiome on modulation of pathology in mouse models of AD.

He has published 185 peer-reviewed manuscripts and has received several awards, including: the Potamkin Prize for Alzheimer's Disease Research from the American Academy of Neurology and the Metropolitan Life Foundation Award for Medical Research. He was inducted as a Fellow of AAAS, and Foreign Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, India and the Spanish Royal Academy of Sciences.

X: @Orr_Lab

Miranda Orr graduated from Montana State University Billings with a degree in Biology and recently received their Chancellor’s Excellence Alumni Award. She went on to receive her PhD in Neuroscience from Montana State University where she performed her dissertation research at the McLaughlin Research Institute for Biomedical Sciences that specializes in developing preclinical models to study brain diseases. Her postdoctoral research training at the University of Texas Health in San Antonio, Texas, focused on the biology of aging and translational research. As an independent investigator at Wake Forest School of Medicine, her research program focuses on changes that occur with aging and how they influence the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.

Her research focuses on the molecular mechanisms of Alzheimer’s disease and the effects of tau accumulation on cellular senescence and risk for chronic neurodegenerative diseases. These studies span basic mechanistic approaches using animal and cell culture models, as well as multicenter human clinical trials. She has a part-time research appointment at the Salisbury VA Medical Center and is committed to educating the next generation of scientists as co-founder and director of the Translational Research in Aging and Alzheimer’s Disease course and through mentorship in her laboratory.

Hee Kyung Jin graduated from Kangwon National University College of Veterinary Medicine in 1993 and obtained her veterinarian license. She earned her PhD in 2000 from Hokkaido University College of Veterinary Medicine, Japan. From 2000 to 2003, she worked at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York in the field of Stem Cell research as a postdoc fellow under the supervision of Prof. Edward H. Schuchman. Since 2003, she established her laboratory at Kyungpook National University College of Veterinary Medicine, as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Laboratory Animal Medicine. Her research interests are investigating novel pathogenesis and drug development of neurodegenerative disease including Alzheimer’s disease by abnormal sphingolipid metabolism.

X: @PreetiSub

Preeti Subramanian received her PhD in Biochemistry from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia, identifying a novel role for bioactive sphingolipid ceramide 1 phosphate (C1P) in mediating inflammation. She completed her postdoctoral training at the National Eye Institute (NEI), performing investigations on pigment epithelium-derived factor (PEDF), an ocular protein with neurotrophic activity. She continued her research in vision science at the NEI, identifying and studying potential therapeutic agents for diseases involving RPE oxidative stress (e.g., age-related macular degeneration).

Currently, as the Director of Vision Science Research at BrightFocus Foundation, she oversees the Macular Degeneration Research and National Glaucoma Research programs. She ensures a high level of scientific accountability within the BrightFocus award programs and engages and maintains a strong relationship with the scientific community.

Colin Masters has focused his career on research in Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative diseases, including Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Over the last 40 years, his work is widely acknowledged as having had a major influence on Alzheimer’s disease research worldwide, particularly the collaborative studies conducted with Konrad Beyreuther in which they discovered the proteolytic neuronal origin of the Aβ amyloid protein, which causes Alzheimer’s disease. This work has led to the continued development of diagnostics and therapeutic strategies and has been recognized by the receipt of many international awards. More recently, he has focused on describing the natural history of Alzheimer’s disease as a necessary preparatory step for disease-modifying therapies.

His achievements have been recognized by the receipt of many international awards, including a Lifetime Achievement Award in Alzheimer’s Disease Research from the Alzheimer’s Association, and the Grand Hamdan International Award for Medical Sciences in the field of Molecular and Cellular Pathology of Neurological Disorders.

Henrietta Nielsen received her PhD in Medicine from Lund University in the Department of Clinical Sciences (Sweden). She then moved on for postdoctoral studies at the VU Medical Center in Amsterdam (The Netherlands), where she investigated the ability of primary human glial cells (astrocytes and microglia) isolated from autopsy-derived brain tissues, to ingest the amyloid-beta peptide in the presence/absence of various amyloid-associated proteins like apolipoproteins E and J. She received further training as a postdoctoral fellow and assistant researcher at Lund University (Sweden) where she spear-headed fluid biomarker discovery efforts including cerebrospinal fluid and blood samples from patients with mild cognitive impairment, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. After working nearly four years at the Department of Neuroscience at Mayo Clinic Florida (US), she accepted a position as an assistant professor and principal investigator in neurochemistry at Stockholm University (Sweden). At Stockholm University she was recently given tenure as an associate professor in neurochemistry, and she now splits her time between tenured positions at Stockholm University and Roskilde University, Denmark.

Her laboratory 'Translational Neurodegeneration Group' has a major focus on investigating biological mechanisms promoting/leading to neurodegenerative dementia. As the strongest genetic risk factor for not only Alzheimer's disease but also dementia with Lewy bodies the Nielsen laboratory devotes a lot of time to better understand the biological processes linking APOE4 to the increased risk of neurodegenerative diseases. With nearly 12 years of research experience and extensive expertise in the field of neurodegenerative diseases she serves as a senior editor for Molecular Neurodegeneration, an associate editor for the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease and an academic editor for Plos One. In 2021, she became President of the International Society for Molecular Neurodegeneration (ISMND).

Originally trained as a neurologist and neuropathologist, Takeshi Iwatsubo has contributed to the studies of human neurodegenerative disorders, especially Alzheimer’s (AD) and Parkinson's disease, using multidisciplinary approaches.

Since the early histopathological discovery that Ab42 is the initially and predominantly deposited amyloid b species in senile plaque amyloid using end-specific antibodies, his team has extensively incorporated biochemical and molecular/cell biological approaches. He has demonstrated that mutations in presenilin genes cause familial AD by increasing the production of Ab42, and extended these lines of research towards the elucidation of the process of g-secretase complex formation. He has also developed a method to isolate and purify Lewy bodies from human brains and demonstrated that a-synuclein, especially a hyperphosphorylated form, is a component of Lewy bodies. Also, he has identified a novel type of membrane-bound collagen as one of the major components of senile plaque amyloid in AD, which was named "CLAC". On the clinical front, he is heading the Japanese AD Neuroimaging Initiative (J-ADNI) project, aimed at establishing standard surrogate markers for clinical trials of disease-modifying therapies for AD.

X: @CharlotteTeuni1

Charlotte Teunissen aims to improve care of patients with neurological diseases by developing body fluid biomarkers for diagnosis, stratification, prognosis and monitoring treatment responses. Studies of her research group span the entire spectrum of biomarker development, starting with biomarker identification, followed by assay development and validation, and extensive clinical validation to ultimately implement novel biomarkers in clinical practice.

She is responsible for the Alzheimer Center Amsterdam body fluid and leads several international biomarker networks, such as the CSF Society and the Alzheimer Association-Global Biomarker Standardization consortium, and the recently founded Coral proteomics consortium. She is the coordinator of the Marie Curie MIRIADE project, aiming to train 15 novel researchers to accelerate dementia biomarker development.

Seung Hyun Kim earned his degree in Medicine at Hanyang University and completed his Doctorate at the same institute. From 1999 to 2001, he worked at Baylor College of Medicine, in the field of ALS as a postdoc fellow und er the supervision of Prof. Staney Appel. He developed JPI-289, novel PARP inhibitor, for treatment of acute ischemic stroke, currently in Phase II clinical trial. In 2015, his therapeutic strategy using autologous Bone Marrow originated Mesenchymal Stem Cell Therapy for ALS was approved as an orphan drug, which had been conducted by Korean NIH research project. He put the autologous stem cell therapy into clinical practice to treat ALS and is now conducting translational research for development of personalized medicine based on unique genetic background of Korean and Asian population. With these works, he received 2016 Secret of life Award from Catholic Foundation, and Award from Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning.

X: @PreetiSub

Preeti Subramanian received her PhD in Biochemistry from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia, identifying a novel role for bioactive sphingolipid ceramide 1 phosphate (C1P) in mediating inflammation. She completed her postdoctoral training at the National Eye Institute (NEI), performing investigations on pigment epithelium-derived factor (PEDF), an ocular protein with neurotrophic activity. She continued her research in vision science at the NEI, identifying and studying potential therapeutic agents for diseases involving RPE oxidative stress (e.g., age-related macular degeneration).

Currently, as the Director of Vision Science Research at BrightFocus Foundation, she oversees the Macular Degeneration Research and National Glaucoma Research programs. She ensures a high level of scientific accountability within the BrightFocus award programs and engages and maintains a strong relationship with the scientific community.

Seung Hyun Kim earned his degree in Medicine at Hanyang University and completed his Doctorate at the same institute. From 1999 to 2001, he worked at Baylor College of Medicine, in the field of ALS as a postdoc fellow und er the supervision of Prof. Staney Appel. He developed JPI-289, novel PARP inhibitor, for treatment of acute ischemic stroke, currently in Phase II clinical trial. In 2015, his therapeutic strategy using autologous Bone Marrow originated Mesenchymal Stem Cell Therapy for ALS was approved as an orphan drug, which had been conducted by Korean NIH research project. He put the autologous stem cell therapy into clinical practice to treat ALS and is now conducting translational research for development of personalized medicine based on unique genetic background of Korean and Asian population. With these works, he received 2016 Secret of life Award from Catholic Foundation, and Award from Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning.

Dr. Hoon Ryu earned his doctoral degree from Jeonbuk National University, South Korea. He completed a postdoctoral research fellowship and was appointed Instructor of Neurology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School in 1999. He joined the Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine’s Department of Neurology in 2004 as an Assistant Professor. He was a Principal Investigator (PI) at the Boston University Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (BU ADRC) and Veterans Administration (VA) Boston Healthcare System from 2008 to 2018. Dr. Ryu was appointed as the Head of Center for Neuroscience in the Brain Science Institute (BSI) of KIST in 2019. Currently, he is the PI of the laboratory for Brain Gene Regulation and Epigenetics (BINGRE) in the BSI, KIST.

His research focuses on the identification of epigenetic biomarkers, determination of cellular and molecular pathological mechanisms of neurodegeneration, and development of therapeutics for neurodegenerative disorders. He has found that altered chromatin plasticity is closely linked to the pathogenesis of Huntington’s disease (HD) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) via an expression of ESET (ERG-associated protein with a SET domain), a histone H3K9-specific methyltransferase. The structure, dynamics, and chemical properties of chromatin orchestrate how, when, and which genes are turned on and off in the brain. Dr. Ryu continues to study the epigenetic mechanisms associated with the neuropathogenesis of AD, HD, and other brain disorders. He has published over 170 original reports.

Throughout his career, Dr. Ryu has been the recipient of multiple honors and awards such as the ILCHUN Memorial Lecture Award (2015), National Research Foundation (NRF) Chairperson’s Appreciation Plaque (2019), KIST Investigator Awards (2020 and 2022), Glia Research Scientist Award (2022), and National Research Council of Science &Technology (NST) Chairperson’s Award (2022).

X: @holtzman4

David Holtzman, MD, received his BS (1983) and MD (1985) from Northwestern University followed by a Neurology residency at UCSF from 1985-1989. He did post-doctoral research at UCSF from 1989-1994. There, in addition to his research, he founded a Memory Disorders clinic. He moved to Washington University in 1994 as an assistant professor to both start his own lab as well as to get involved in clinical activities and teaching. He is currently professor of Neurology, scientific director of the Hope Center for Neurological Disorders and associate director of the Knight ADRC. He was the Chair of the Department of Neurology at Washington University from 2003-2021.

Some of his and his lab’s accomplishments include showing, in part, how apoE4 contributes to AD, development of a method to measure protein synthesis and clearance in the CNS of animals and humans, development of CSF biomarkers for AD, demonstration of how synaptic/neuronal activity and sleep affect amyloid-β (Aβ) and tau levels dynamically in vivo acutely and chronically, determined that apoE and TREM2 contribute to the brain’s innate immune response that influences amyloid-induced tau seeding and spreading, as well as tau-mediated neurodegeneration, and development of an anti-Aβ antibody now in three Phase III trials for AD and an anti-apoE antibody that has therapeutic potential. Holtzman co-founded the company C2N Diagnostics in 2007 with colleague Randall Bateman, MD and Life Tech Research.

He has received a number of honors including being a recipient of a Paul Beeson Physician Faculty Scholar award in Aging research, the Potamkin prize from the American Academy of Neurology for research on Alzheimer’s disease, the MetLife award for Alzheimer’s disease research, a MERIT award from the NIA, election to the National Academy of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, election to the National Academy of Inventors, an alumni merit award from the Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine, being appointed to the National Advisory council of the NINDS and NIA, the Chancellor’s award for innovation and entrepreneurship and the Carl and Gerty Cori award from Washington University, being elected Fellow of the AAAS, being the past president of the American Neurological Association, and being the 2021 recipient of the Rainwater Prize for Outstanding Innovation in Neurodegenerative Research.

X: @jungsukim77

Jungsu Kim graduated Summa Cum Laude in 2000 from Pohang University of Science & Technology in Korea with a bachelor’s degree in life science. He earned his Ph.D. from Mayo Clinic College of Medicine in 2007 under the guidance of Dr. Todd Golde and completed his postdoctoral training at Washington University in the laboratory of Dr. David Holtzman. After 3 years of postdoctoral training, he established his laboratory at Washington University, as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurology. In June 2013, Dr. Kim joined the Department of Neuroscience at Mayo Clinic. After 5 years of tenure as a Senior Associate Consultant I at Mayo Clinic, Dr. Kim relocated his laboratory to the Stark Neurosciences Research Institute at IU School of Medicine in 2018.

Research in Kim lab is aimed at developing therapeutic strategies for Alzheimer’s disease by targeting microglial proteins implicated in neuroinflammation as well as brain lipid-regulating proteins, such as apolipoprotein E (ApoE), low density lipoprotein receptor (LDLR), and ATP-binding cassette transporter A1 (ABCA1). Kim lab is also interested in the role of epigenetics and non-coding RNAs in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease and other aging-associated neurodegenerative diseases. Emerging transcriptomics technologies recently revealed that many non-coding regions encode functional RNAs, such as microRNAs (miRNAs) and long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs).

Using genetically modified animal models, human biospecimens, induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC), emerging single-cell transcriptomics, single-cell proteomics, and systems biology approaches, Kim lab investigates the function of multiple microglial proteins, ApoE-binding proteins, and non-coding RNAs that may play critical roles in neurodegenerative diseases and brain aging.

After graduating from his PhD in Pohang University of Science and Technology (South Korea), Seung-Jae Lee completed postdoctoral research at the National Institutes of Health (US) and Harvard Medical School (US), before becoming an Assistant Professor at Parkinson's Institute and Clinical Center, CA (US). He then moved to Konkuk University (South Korea) where he became a full professor, ultimately moving to Seoul National University College of Medicine (South Korea).

The goal of his research program is to understand the mechanism of abnormal protein aggregations and its roles in neurodegeneration as well as in neuroinflammation. His group has been particularly interested in the normal and pathophysiological behavior of alpha-synuclein, a neuronal protein implicated in several human neurodegenerative diseases, including Parkinson’s disease, dementia with Lewy bodies, multiple system atrophy, and Alzheimer’s disease.

To achieve this goal, his team implements basic molecular cell biology techniques (viral vectors, fluorescence imaging, subcellular fractionations), protein biochemistry techniques (liquid chromatography, protein fibrillation kinetic analyses, secondary structure analyses, electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy), and animal modeling (transgenic mice, stereotaxic brain injection, immunohistochemistry, behavioral analyses, C. elegans model generation and analyses).

X: @wonsukchung

Won-Suk Chung completed his Ph.D. at University of California, San Francisco (Advisor: Dr. Didier Stainier). He then completed his postdoctoral studies at Stanford University (Advisor: Dr. Ben A. Barres). During his postdoctoral work, he found that astrocytes actively contribute to the activity-dependent synapse elimination that refines neural circuits during development by phagocytosing synapses via the MEGF10 and MERTK phagocytic pathway. He started his own laboratory at KAIST in 2016, where he is continuously working on the molecular mechanisms and physiological impacts of astrocyte-mediated synapse elimination in healthy and diseased brains. He became an associate professor in 2022.

Xiaofen Chen received her Ph.D. at Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences where she used biochemistry, genetics, and molecular biology tools to address how telomere and telomerase modulate the replicative aging process in the budding yeast. From 2009 to 2012, she performed her postdoctoral work with Dr. Michael Carey at UCLA on mechanisms of transcriptional regulation in eukaryotes. She joined the faculty at Xiamen University in 2012 when it was first reported that a loss-of-function R47H mutation in TREM2 constitutes one of the strongest single allele genetic risk factors for AD.

Her research focuses on exploring the Alzheimer's disease (AD)-related pathogenic pathways in microglia to inform early diagnosis and therapy. More specifically, she has focused on dissecting the biological and pathological functions of TREM2 in AD and related dementias. In collaboration with international experts in neurobiology, she has published novel findings in reputed journals. She has received several peer-reviewed research grants and has been awarded several international and national honors and awards.

Robert Vassar received his PhD at the University of Chicago and completed his Postdoctoral Fellowship at Columbia University. He moved to the biotechnology company Amgen as a Research Scientist. During this time, he co-discovered the beta-secretase enzyme, BACE1, a prime Alzheimer’s disease drug target for which inhibitors are currently being tested in clinical trials. He became a Professor of Cell and Molecular Biology at Northwestern University in 2001.

His research at Feinberg School of Medicine (Northwestern University) continues to investigate BACE1 and the role of inflammation in AD pathophysiology. Other projects study rare genetic mutations that increase the risk of late-onset Alzheimer’s disease (angiotensin converting enzyme and UNC5C). They also investigate how the microbiome affects astrocyte activation and inflammation in Alzheimer’s disease. These projects utilize a combination of biochemical, cell culture, and novel transgenic and knockout mouse models of AD.

During his career, he has received many prestigious honors, including the MetLife Foundation Award for Medical Research in Alzheimer’s Disease in 2007, the Potamkin Prize from the American Academy of Neurology in 2009 and the Zenith Fellows Award from the Alzheimer’s Association in 2014.

Dr. Seung-Yong Yoon received his MD, PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Ulsan College of Medicine. He is now a Professor and the Chair of the Department of Brain Science at the University of Ulsan College of Medicine.

He and his lab have continued basic and translational research on Alzheimer’s disease and neuroscience. His lab developed an anti-acetylated microtubule binding repeat (MTBR) tau antibody, which is in phase-1 clinical trial in US. It targets the acetylated K280 in VQIINK motif of MTBR, a catalyst of tau aggregation and transmission, offering distinct advantages over other tau antibodies and showing promising success possibilities. In addition to his academic contributions, Dr. Yoon is the founder of ADEL, Inc., a company dedicated to the development of therapeutics and diagnostics for Alzheimer's disease.

X: @LiGanLab

Li Gan received a Bachelor of Science degree in physiology in 1990 from Peking University in Beijing and a doctorate in cellular and molecular physiology in 1996 from Yale University School of Medicine. She completed postdoctoral training at Harvard Medical School and the Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease at the University of California, San Francisco, where she became a senior investigator at Gladstone Institutes, and professor-in-residence at UCSF, joining Weill Cornell Medicine in July 2018.

Her research focuses on innate immunity and proteostasis, the converging and interconnected pathways in neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD). On the proteostasis front, her work linked endolysosomal dysfunction with amyloid beta degradation in AD and aberrant acetylation with tau degradation and toxicity in FTD. Her research also aims at dissecting how maladaptive innate immune responses leads to functional deficits, proteostasis malfunction, and disease progression. Her earlier work uncovered a novel epigenetic mechanism underlying the interplay of NF-kB hyperactivation and SIRT1 in aging-associated chronic inflammation. Her research also identified a critical role of microglial NFκB-TNFα hyperactivation in obsessive-compulsive behavioral observed in progranulin deficient FTD mouse models. Her most recent work focuses on functional consequence and underlying mechanism of mutations on TREM2, the strongest innate immune risk factor in AD.

X: @DeStrooperLab

Bart De Strooper is a world-renowned Alzheimer's disease researcher. He received his M.D. in 1985 and Ph.D. in 1991 from KU Leuven. He worked as postdoctoral researcher in the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, in the laboratory of Carlos Dotti.

He is best known for his work on the proteolytic processing of the amyloid precursor protein, the functional studies of presenilin and the identification of gamma-secretase. More recently he has worked on a cellular theory for Alzheimer to explain how different cell types underlay the progressive disease process.

He was Director at the Vlaams Instituut voor Biotechnologie and led a neuroscience department of over 250 researchers. He was elected to the Academy of Medical Sciences Fellowship in 2020, and has received several awards including the Potamkin prize, the Metlife Foundation Award for Medical Research, Alois Alzheimer’s prize, the highly prestigious Brain Prize 2018 and Commander in the Order of Leopold I. In addition to steering the UK DRI as National Director, his research group at the UK DRI at UCL interrogates the fundamental mechanisms behind Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. He is also a professor of molecular medicine at the KU Leuven and VIB, Belgium.

X: @Duff_Lab

Karen Duff is a leader in the field of neurodegenerative disease. She received her PhD from Sydney Brenner’s department at the University of Cambridge in 1991. She undertook postdoc positions in London with Alison Goate from 1991-1992, and John Hardy at the University of South Florida from 1992-1994. She was an Assistant Professor at the University of South Florida from 1993-1996, Associate Professor at Mayo Clinic Jacksonville from 1996-1998, and Professor at the New York University Nathan Kline Institute from 1998-2006 followed by Columbia University from 2006-2019 where she was deputy director of the Taub Institute.

Her interests span a range of research areas, from discovery science through to therapeutic approaches. Over her career she has created several important mouse models for AD and FTD-tau and she has studied several disease-associated molecular mechanisms using innovative and state of the art methods. Her most recent interests include the causes and consequences of tau pathology propagation, and the basis of selective cellular vulnerability.

She has published 140 peer-reviewed research articles and received several prizes including the Potemkin Prize in 2006 and most recently the British Neuroscience Association award for Outstanding Contribution to Neuroscience in 2020 and Fellowship of the UK Academy of Medical Sciences in 2022.

X: @DrNeuroChic

Melissa E. Murray and her colleagues in Mayo Clinic's Translational Neuropathology Lab, use a multidisciplinary approach that integrates neuropathology, neuroimaging and genetics to investigate neurocognitive disorders (Alzheimer's disease), parkinsonian disorders (dementia with Lewy bodies) and motor neuron disorders (Lou Gehrig's disease). She is specifically interested in the effect of brain aging overlaid with a neurodegenerative disorder. The lab has revealed striking differences regarding vulnerability or resilience in affected individuals, especially in the setting of Alzheimer's disease (AD).

She has published over 190 scientific papers, with the bulk of her NIH- and foundation-funded studies centered on identifying the clinicopathologic characteristics and neuroimaging biomarkers of AD and related dementias.

Dr. Hui (Iris) Zhang received her B.A. in Biophysics from Fudan University and completed her Ph.D. in Neurobiology at Columbia University. She then joined the laboratory of David Sulzer at Columbia University for postdoctoral training. Currently, she is an Associate Professor at the Center for Neurological Disease Research, College of Veterinary Medicine, The University of Georgia.

A pioneer in advancing optical methodologies for monitoring dopamine release, Dr. Zhang is an expert specializing in revealing the role of dopaminergic neurotransmission in both normal brain functions and diseases. Her research focuses on deciphering the factors that contribute to the neurodegeneration of dopamine (DA) neurons in Parkinson’s disease (PD), with a particular emphasis on understanding the unique susceptibility of substantia nigra compacta DA neurons. To achieve this, her team employs an array of state-of-the-art techniques, including advanced optical, electrochemical, electrophysiological, and genetic approaches to address these crucial questions. The overarching goal of her lab is to identify novel therapeutic targets for future interventions. Her lab is currently funded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

Dr. YoungSoo Kim completed his B.A. degree in biochemistry from New York University in 2001, with Professor Young-Tae Chang as an undergraduate research advisor. He then studied bioorganic chemistry under the supervision of Professor Kim D. Janda at Scripps Research and obtained his Ph.D. degree in chemistry in 2006.

In 2006, Dr. Kim joined Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) as a research scientist. In 2010, after his military service duty, he became a principal investigator of Brain Science Institute at KIST and associate professor of biological chemistry at Korea University of Science and Technology (UST). In 2017, he moved to Yonsei University as an assistant professor of bio-convergence (ISED) and pharmacy. In 2020, he was promoted to an associate professor of pharmacy. In addition to Department of Pharmacy, Kim is affiliated in three other departments of Yonsei; Integrated Science and Engineering Division (ISED), of Underwood International College (UIC), Graduate Program of Integrative Biotechnology and Translational Medicine (IBTM), and Graduate Program of Industrial Pharmaceutical Sciences.

Kim's work focuses on pathology, therapeutics, and diagnostics of Alzheimer's disease by using Chemical Biology as a research tool. A significant effort of the Kim laboratory in recent years has been to identify small molecules that control protein misfolding and cognitive impairments of Alzheimer's disease for drug discovery and blood test kit development. Kim is a pioneer ‘chemical-driven amyloid clearance’, which is a novel therapeutic approach to directly dissociate preformed amyloid protein aggregates such as Aβ, tau, and synuclein into their non-toxic monomeric states by small molecules instead of antibodies.

He has been the recipient of many awards such as Commendation Award by Minister of Health and Welfare (South Korea), POSCO Science Fellowship (POSCO TJ Park Foundation), Y-KAST (The Korean Academy of Science and Technology), Dae-Sill Lee Academic Excellence Award (Korean Chemical Society), and Next-Generation Leading Pharmaceutical Scientist (The Pharmaceutical Society of Korea). Kim is a co-founder and CSO of an Alzheimer drug discovery biotech, Amyloid Solution, inc.

X: @YuemingLiLab

Dr. Yueming Li received his Ph.D. degree from the University of California, Berkeley and postdoctoral training at Harvard Medical School. Prior to coming to Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in 2002, Dr. Li spent five years at Merck Research Laboratories, where he was involved with the ins-and-outs of drug development. His lab studies aging-related human disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and cancer. He is investigating if there are any connections between AD and cancer. His research interests focus on the function and regulation γ-secretase, autophagy and neuroinflammation ranging from the disease mechanism to therapeutic development. Dr. Li has pioneered our understanding of the function and regulation of γ‐secretase under pathophysiological conditions.

He has published more than 100 papers in top-tier journals including Science, Nature, PNAS and other specialized journals directly related to biomedical research. He has been honored by the MetLife Foundation Awards for Medical Research in Alzheimer ’s disease. He was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and received the Weill Cornell Graduate School Excellence in Teaching and Mentoring Award that recognizes his distinguished contribution teaching and mentoring of students, postdocs, and faculty.

Dr. Seong-Ho Koh earned his Ph.D. from the Department of Neurology at Hanyang University's College of Medicine. He furthered his training in Department of Neurology and Radiology at Harvard University, USA, as a Postdoctoral Fellow between 2013 and 2014, and in Department of Immunology, Genetics, and Pathology, Science for Life Laboratory, Uppsala University, Sweden, as a Visiting Scholar in 2016. He currently holds a Professorship in the Department of Neurology at the College of Medicine, Hanyang University, Korea.

As a neurologist, he specializes in treating Alzheimer's disease and is actively engaged in research on novel therapeutic approaches and blood biomarkers for early Alzheimer's diagnosis. His prolific research career includes over 220 peer-reviewed publications in prestigious journals such as Nature Medicine, JAMA Neurology, Alzheimer’s Disease and Dementia, Brain Behavior and Immunity, among others. He has also been honored with numerous accolades, including the Prime Minister’s Award in 2023.

X: @owenaross

Owen Ross completed his PhD in Genetics at the University of Ulster and moved to the Department of Neuroscience in the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida in 2005. His primary research is focused on the role of genetics in familial and sporadic forms of parkinsonism and related movement disorders and stroke and vascular neurological disorders. He has played an important role in characterizing the two most important genes in Parkinson's disease, LRRK2 and SNCA. He has identified functional common risk factors and patient populations in Parkinson's disease, demonstrating the importance of genetics in sporadic disease. He has also identified novel genes for Parkinson's disease and a number of related disorders.

He has collaborated with researchers in departments of neurology and neuroscience in more than 20 countries. He is part of a team of internationally recognized researchers and clinicians with specialty training in Parkinson's disease and movement disorders supported by the American Parkinson Disease Association. He has co-authored over 275 publications on the subject of ageing and age-related diseases, including movement disorders, dementia, stroke and related disorders.

X: @WangXiaoLab

Xiao Wang received her B.S. in chemistry and molecular engineering from Peking University (China) in 2010, where she studied with Professor Jian Pei and helped develop fluorescent organic materials. She received her Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Chicago (USA) in 2015, where she elucidated the cellular functions of RNA modifications with Professor Chuan He. She completed her postdoctoral research at Stanford University Bioengineering (USA) with Professor Karl Deisseroth. During this time she developed comprehensive methods for analyzing RNA in intact tissues that merge sequencing with imaging, in order to reveal the locations of various cell types in the brain and to find out how these cells are connected.
She started her own laboratory at the Broad Institute to develop and apply new chemical, biophysical, and genomic tools to better understand tissue function and dysfunction at the molecular level. Specifically, her team aims to (1) develop a molecular and computational toolbox of spatially resolved in situ sequencing methods to measure RNA processing, RNA translation, RNA-protein interactions, and RNA turnover in intact cells and tissues; (2) explore RNA-centered pathways at subcellular and single-cell resolutions in brain function and dysfunction by multi-modal mapping and analysis of gene expression, brain morphology, and neural activity; (3) develop new strategies for RNA therapeutics.

During her graduate studies, she was awarded the Chinese Government Award for Outstanding Self-Financed Students Abroad and the Elizabeth R. Norton Prize for Excellence in Research in Chemistry. At Stanford, Wang is also a recipient of a Merkin Institute Fellowship at the Broad.

X: @DGateLab

David Gate received his graduate degree in Integrative Biology of Disease from the University of Southern California in 2015. He completed postdoctoral training in the Wyss-Coray lab at Stanford University in 2020. He is currently a faculty member in Northwestern Neurology, where he studies the role of adaptive immunity in neurodegeneration. Specifically, his work focuses on the interplay between T cells and neurodegenerative disease antigens. His laboratory employs multi-omics strategies to interpret immune system changes related to neurodegeneration. Their goal is to identify novel biomarkers or immunotherapeutic targets for neurodegeneration.

For this work, he has received an NIH/NINDS K99/R00 grant, an Alzheimer’s Association Young Investigator Award, a Junior Faculty Award from the AD/PD Congress and recently received the 10x Genomics Early Career Investigator Award.

X: @JunminPengLab

Jumin Peng earned his BS from Wuhan University in China before earning a PhD in biochemistry from the University of Iowa. After a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University, he served a researcher and faculty member at Emory University for 9 years before joining St. Jude in 2011. Dr. Peng is a member of both the Structural Biology and Developmental Neurobiology departments at St. Jude and serves as the director of the Center for Proteomics and Metabolomics.

His mission is to develop novel mass spectrometry-based proteomics and metabolomics technologies, systems biology approaches, and to apply these tools to biomedical challenges (e.g. Alzheimer’s disease, cancer and immunity). He seeks to obtain the full spectra of temporal and spatial omics data at bulk and single-cell-type levels from animal models and human clinical specimens. The multi-omics data include genome, transcriptome, proteome (the whole proteome and modified proteomes such as phosphoproteome and ubiquitinome), metabolome, and interactome. Network analysis and integration of such multi-omics data with phenotypic information offer a systems or holistic view, for unbiased identification of central disease gene/protein/metabolite networks, functional modules and master regulators. Beyond the big data analysis, he develops mouse models for functional and mechanistic studies to validate the derived hypotheses. These studies provide novel insights into the pathogenesis for therapeutic intervention and may discover disease biomarkers for precision medicine.

X: @RossollLab

Wilfried Rossoll is a cell biologist and neuroscientist with more than 15 years of experience as principal investigator to direct NIH funded studies on molecular disease mechanisms in neurodegenerative disorders. He completed his PhD at the University of Vienna (Austria), before completing his postdoc with Dr. Michael Sendtner at the Institute for Clinical Neurobiology in Wuerzburg, Germany. During this time, he became involved in studying SMA and other motor neuron diseases. He then moved to Emory University (US) as an instructor, and then a research assistant professor. It was here where he focused on cellular mechanisms that regulate mRNA processing in neurons, and the contribution of mRNA binding proteins and mRNA processing defects to the pathomechanisms in neurodegenerative diseases such as SMA and ALS/FTD. In early 2017, he joined the faculty in the Department of Neuroscience at Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, to establish the Neurobiology of Neurodegenerative Diseases Laboratory and continue his independent research program on cellular and molecular disease mechanisms in neurodegenerative diseases.

Following his discovery that TDP-43 is present in mobile transport granules in motor axons and that TDP-43 pathology disrupts nuclear pore complexes and nucleocytoplasmic transport in FTD/ALS, his lab has maintained a strong research interest in investigating protein aggregation and other proteomic changes in neurodegenerative diseases. Related to these efforts, he and his team are working in collaboration with Dr. Jim Shorter (UPenn) to harness the molecular chaperone activity of nuclear import receptors and other components of the nucleocytoplasmic transport machinery, to reduce neurotoxic protein aggregation and restore normal protein localization and function. Another important focus area is the application of advanced proximity proteomics methods to investigate the composition of neuropathological aggregates in proteinopathy disease models and patient tissue. In an ongoing proteomics-focused collaboration with Dr. Junmin Peng (St. Jude), he is studying age-related and cell type-specific proteome dynamics and interaction in the brain and their deregulation in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). His team has recently established proximity-labeling methods for spatial proteomics in a Collaborative Pairs Pilot Project with the support of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI). This pilot grant was the basis for an ongoing project to capture the molecular environment of pathological tau aggregates in human formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE) brain tissue.

X: Lucyjob2

Lucy Job hails from Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. She received her BSc in Biomedical Science from Leeds Beckett University, and her MSc in Translational Neuroscience from the Sheffield Institute for Translational Neuroscience (SITraN) at the University of Sheffield, under the supervision of Dr. Scott P Allen. She moved to Mayo Clinic Florida (USA) as a Special Project Associate II in Dr. Guojun Bu’s Neurobiology of Alzheimer’s Disease laboratory and the Neuroregeneration Lab. During this time, she utilized human skin and blood biopsies to generate induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) for the Mayo Clinic biobank.

After two years in Dr. Guojun Bu’s lab, she returned to the UK to the University of Liverpool. She then moved to the UK Dementia Research Institute at University College London (UCL) as an iPSC and Differentiated Cell Technician co-supervised by Professor Selina Wray and Professor Karen Duff. During this time, her role included differentiation of iPSCs to neurons and cerebral organoids. Concurrently, she worked part time as a Managing Editor at Molecular Neurodegeneration, ultimately becoming full time and moving back to the US. She is also the Communications Diversity Officer at International Society for Molecular Neurodegeneration (ISMND).

Hui Zheng received her BSc from Peking University, Beijing (China), before completing her PhD Baylor College of Medicine (USA). She completed her Postdoctoral Fellowship at Baylor College of Medicine. Currently, she is the Director & Professor of the Huffington Center on Aging at Baylor College of Medicine.

Hui Zheng’s laboratory has a long-standing interest in basic and translational research on Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Her expertise is mouse genetics and she is known for using sophisticated mouse models and innovative approaches to probe the biology and pathophysiology of AD. Her earlier investigations provided critical insights into the role of the amyloid precursor protein and presenilins in synaptic regulation and amyloid processing. Her recent efforts have expanded from neurons to glial cells and from amyloid pathology to tau and neurofibrillary tangles. Their major projects are focused on the investigation of the autophagy-lysosomal pathway and neuron-immune interaction with the goal to understand the disease mechanisms and to identify new therapeutic targets. Along these lines, they have identified a highly selective and potent role of TFEB in the clearance of neurofibrillary tangles and deciphered cell-autonomous and non-cell-autonomous mechanisms in this process. Additionally, they have mapped out a complement C3 and C3aR signaling axis that governs network function and innate immunity in the context of aging, AD and tauopathy. Lastly, they revealed a novel epoxy lipid metabolic pathway that becomes dysregulated in AD and show that targeting this pathway by small molecule inhibitors lead to potent anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective effects, supporting the potential of these inhibitors as AD therapy.

During her career, she has received multiple awards such as the New Scholars Award (Ellison Medical Foundation), the Zenith Award (Alzheimer’s Association), and Chair, NIA-N Review Committee (NIH/NIA).

X: @DGateLab

David Gate received his graduate degree in Integrative Biology of Disease from the University of Southern California in 2015. He completed postdoctoral training in the Wyss-Coray lab at Stanford University in 2020. He is currently a faculty member in Northwestern Neurology, where he studies the role of adaptive immunity in neurodegeneration. Specifically, his work focuses on the interplay between T cells and neurodegenerative disease antigens. His laboratory employs multi-omics strategies to interpret immune system changes related to neurodegeneration. Their goal is to identify novel biomarkers or immunotherapeutic targets for neurodegeneration.

For this work, he has received an NIH/NINDS K99/R00 grant, an Alzheimer’s Association Young Investigator Award, a Junior Faculty Award from the AD/PD Congress and recently received the 10x Genomics Early Career Investigator Award.

X: @JunminPengLab

Jumin Peng earned his BS from Wuhan University in China before earning a PhD in biochemistry from the University of Iowa. After a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University, he served a researcher and faculty member at Emory University for 9 years before joining St. Jude in 2011. Dr. Peng is a member of both the Structural Biology and Developmental Neurobiology departments at St. Jude and serves as the director of the Center for Proteomics and Metabolomics.

His mission is to develop novel mass spectrometry-based proteomics and metabolomics technologies, systems biology approaches, and to apply these tools to biomedical challenges (e.g. Alzheimer’s disease, cancer and immunity). He seeks to obtain the full spectra of temporal and spatial omics data at bulk and single-cell-type levels from animal models and human clinical specimens. The multi-omics data include genome, transcriptome, proteome (the whole proteome and modified proteomes such as phosphoproteome and ubiquitinome), metabolome, and interactome. Network analysis and integration of such multi-omics data with phenotypic information offer a systems or holistic view, for unbiased identification of central disease gene/protein/metabolite networks, functional modules and master regulators. Beyond the big data analysis, he develops mouse models for functional and mechanistic studies to validate the derived hypotheses. These studies provide novel insights into the pathogenesis for therapeutic intervention and may discover disease biomarkers for precision medicine.

X: @mengwang939

Meng Wang and her team use multidisciplinary approaches to study metabolite-directed communication systems that promote the healthy survival of an organism. Her team has uncovered the role of metabolite signaling in organelles, microbiome-host interactions, and olfactory regulation; has identified effective metabolites for improving an organism’s health span, or how long an organism remains healthy and free of disease; and has developed innovative imaging platforms for in vivo metabolite fingerprinting to determine the distribution and concentration of metabolites in an organism at a given time.

She and her team use the model organism C. elegans to study changes over the organism’s lifespan. They employ cutting-edge tools to monitor the metabolic status of the organism as a whole and image the metabolic state of the organism throughout its lifespan to look for changes over time in different cell types and organelles.

X: @DeStrooperLab

Bart De Strooper is a world-renowned Alzheimer's disease researcher. He received his M.D. in 1985 and Ph.D. in 1991 from KU Leuven. He worked as postdoctoral researcher in the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, in the laboratory of Carlos Dotti.

He is best known for his work on the proteolytic processing of the amyloid precursor protein, the functional studies of presenilin and the identification of gamma-secretase. More recently he has worked on a cellular theory for Alzheimer to explain how different cell types underlay the progressive disease process.

He was Director at the Vlaams Instituut voor Biotechnologie and led a neuroscience department of over 250 researchers. He was elected to the Academy of Medical Sciences Fellowship in 2020, and has received several awards including the Potamkin prize, the Metlife Foundation Award for Medical Research, Alois Alzheimer’s prize, the highly prestigious Brain Prize 2018 and Commander in the Order of Leopold I. In addition to steering the UK DRI as National Director, his research group at the UK DRI at UCL interrogates the fundamental mechanisms behind Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. He is also a professor of molecular medicine at the KU Leuven and VIB, Belgium.

X: @WangXiaoLab

Xiao Wang received her B.S. in chemistry and molecular engineering from Peking University (China) in 2010, where she studied with Professor Jian Pei and helped develop fluorescent organic materials. She received her Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Chicago (USA) in 2015, where she elucidated the cellular functions of RNA modifications with Professor Chuan He. She completed her postdoctoral research at Stanford University Bioengineering (USA) with Professor Karl Deisseroth. During this time she developed comprehensive methods for analyzing RNA in intact tissues that merge sequencing with imaging, in order to reveal the locations of various cell types in the brain and to find out how these cells are connected.
She started her own laboratory at the Broad Institute to develop and apply new chemical, biophysical, and genomic tools to better understand tissue function and dysfunction at the molecular level. Specifically, her team aims to (1) develop a molecular and computational toolbox of spatially resolved in situ sequencing methods to measure RNA processing, RNA translation, RNA-protein interactions, and RNA turnover in intact cells and tissues; (2) explore RNA-centered pathways at subcellular and single-cell resolutions in brain function and dysfunction by multi-modal mapping and analysis of gene expression, brain morphology, and neural activity; (3) develop new strategies for RNA therapeutics.

During her graduate studies, she was awarded the Chinese Government Award for Outstanding Self-Financed Students Abroad and the Elizabeth R. Norton Prize for Excellence in Research in Chemistry. At Stanford, Wang is also a recipient of a Merkin Institute Fellowship at the Broad.

X: @LiGanLab

Li Gan received a Bachelor of Science degree in physiology in 1990 from Peking University in Beijing and a doctorate in cellular and molecular physiology in 1996 from Yale University School of Medicine. She completed postdoctoral training at Harvard Medical School and the Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease at the University of California, San Francisco, where she became a senior investigator at Gladstone Institutes, and professor-in-residence at UCSF, joining Weill Cornell Medicine in July 2018.

Her research focuses on innate immunity and proteostasis, the converging and interconnected pathways in neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD). On the proteostasis front, her work linked endolysosomal dysfunction with amyloid beta degradation in AD and aberrant acetylation with tau degradation and toxicity in FTD. Her research also aims at dissecting how maladaptive innate immune responses leads to functional deficits, proteostasis malfunction, and disease progression. Her earlier work uncovered a novel epigenetic mechanism underlying the interplay of NF-kB hyperactivation and SIRT1 in aging-associated chronic inflammation. Her research also identified a critical role of microglial NFκB-TNFα hyperactivation in obsessive-compulsive behavioral observed in progranulin deficient FTD mouse models. Her most recent work focuses on functional consequence and underlying mechanism of mutations on TREM2, the strongest innate immune risk factor in AD.

Hui Zheng received her BSc from Peking University, Beijing (China), before completing her PhD Baylor College of Medicine (USA). She completed her Postdoctoral Fellowship at Baylor College of Medicine. Currently, she is the Director & Professor of the Huffington Center on Aging at Baylor College of Medicine.

Hui Zheng’s laboratory has a long-standing interest in basic and translational research on Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Her expertise is mouse genetics and she is known for using sophisticated mouse models and innovative approaches to probe the biology and pathophysiology of AD. Her earlier investigations provided critical insights into the role of the amyloid precursor protein and presenilins in synaptic regulation and amyloid processing. Her recent efforts have expanded from neurons to glial cells and from amyloid pathology to tau and neurofibrillary tangles. Their major projects are focused on the investigation of the autophagy-lysosomal pathway and neuron-immune interaction with the goal to understand the disease mechanisms and to identify new therapeutic targets. Along these lines, they have identified a highly selective and potent role of TFEB in the clearance of neurofibrillary tangles and deciphered cell-autonomous and non-cell-autonomous mechanisms in this process. Additionally, they have mapped out a complement C3 and C3aR signaling axis that governs network function and innate immunity in the context of aging, AD and tauopathy. Lastly, they revealed a novel epoxy lipid metabolic pathway that becomes dysregulated in AD and show that targeting this pathway by small molecule inhibitors lead to potent anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective effects, supporting the potential of these inhibitors as AD therapy.

During her career, she has received multiple awards such as the New Scholars Award (Ellison Medical Foundation), the Zenith Award (Alzheimer’s Association), and Chair, NIA-N Review Committee (NIH/NIA).

Dr. Jung-Joon Sung received his BA and MD from Seoul National University College of Medicine in 1992. He received PhD in 2003 from Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul Korea. He completed internship, residency, and neuromuscular fellowship in 2003 under the supervision of Professor Kwang-Woo Lee at Department of Neurology, Seoul National University Hospital, Seoul Korea. In 2003, he was recruited as a clinical professor in 2003, and has been a full professor since 2014 at Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul National University Hospital Seoul Korea. He was a visiting professor at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute under the supervision of Dr. Stuart A. Lipton from 2008 to 2010.

His research is distributed across both clinical and basic science, specializing in neuromuscular diseases, and is especially focused on translational medicine for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. He found pathogenic mechanisms regarding mciroRNAs, PDI, and the interaction of SOD1 and TDP43, and new clinical biomarkers in ALS. Recently, he has been concentrating his research capabilities on the development of cell and gene therapy using cell fusion techniques to cure ALS.

Dr. Sung has authored or co-authored 138 international publications. He has applied for more than 20 international patents and registered 9 patents. Dr. Sung is serving or served as a member of international scientific committees including International Congress of Neuromuscular Disorders (ICNMD) and Asian Ocean Congress of Neurology (AOCN). He served as an editor of journals, “Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine” and “Experimental Neurobiology”. He is leading the Korean Consortium for ALS Research (KoCALS), Korean Society for Clinical Neurophysiology (KSCN), and Korean Society for Neurodegenerative Disorders (KSND).

Xiaodong Wang is a biochemist known for his work in delineating the biochemical pathways of regulated cell death in mammalian cells including mitochondria-initiated apoptosis and RIPK3-MLKL mediated necrosis namely necroptosis.

He received his B.S. in Biology from Beijing Normal University in 1984 and his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in 1991. After a post-doctorial training in the same school, he started his independent career at the department of Biochemistry, Emory University School of Medicine in 1995. Before he went back to Beijing to take his current job in 2010, he was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and held the position of the George L. MacGregor Distinguished Chair Professor in Biomedical Sciences at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas. He is a member of the National Academy of Science, USA and a foreign associate of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and European Molecular Biology Organization.

The goal of his research is to understand how and why cells die through apoptosis and eventually use this knowledge to combat human diseases in which apoptosis becomes defective. These diseases include cancer and neurodegenerative diseases during which apoptosis is either blocked or undesirably turned on. He and his team have been using biochemical approaches to study apoptosis. He has uncovered biochemical pathways that activate intracellular apoptotic proteases (caspases) and fragment chromatin DNA during apoptosis. During the biochemical analysis of apoptotic pathways in human cells, he discovered the role of mitochondria in apoptosis. He found that mitochondria release proteins such as cytochrome c, Smac, and EndoG from their intermembrane space during apoptosis. These proteins then interact with cytosolic proteins to trigger the activation of caspases and DNA fragmentation. He also found that the release of these apoptogenetic proteins is regulated by the Bcl-2 family of proteins, a group of homologous proteins that have roles in tumorgenesis. His teams’ current research is focusing on how apoptotic signals transduce to mitochondria. They are also collaborating with chemists to design small chemicals to regulate the mitochondria-initiated apoptotic pathways.

Philip Wong received his undergraduate degree in biochemistry and his Ph.D. in biochemistry and molecular biology from the University of Western Ontario in Canada. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship in cellular and molecular biology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in the Department of Biological Chemistry.

The overarching themes of his lab focuses on the biology and pathobiology of an RNA splicing factor termed TDP-43 (TAR DNA/RNA binding protein 43kDa) that regulate the inclusion of cryptic exons, the loss of which underlies the pathogenic mechanism of several human age-related degenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s Disease Related Dementia (ADRD), Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD) as well as Inclusion Body Myositis (IBM). His team takes a molecular/cellular approach, including transgenic, gene targeting, and RNAi strategies in mice, to develop models that facilitate their understanding of pathogenesis of AD and ALS-FTD as well as the identification and validation of novel targets for mechanism-based therapeutics.

Sandrine graduated with distinction in Biochemistry from the University of Grenoble in France. She obtained her PhD in 2005 on mitochondrial biology at the University of Geneva and then for her postdoctoral work, joined the laboratory of Don Cleveland at the University of California San Diego where she started investigating mechanisms of inherited ALS using mouse genetics. In 2013 she transitioned as research scientist at the Ludwig Institute from Cancer Research San Diego Branch, and in 2016 she was appointed Assistant Investigator and head of the Laboratory of Neurobiology.

Her research focuses on disease mechanisms and therapy development for Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD) using mouse models as well as in vitro cellular models including patient-induced pluripotent stem cells. Her lab investigates two main questions: (1) how de-mixing/aggregation of RNA binding proteins TDP-43 and FUS causes toxicity, (2) what causes the early demise of neuromuscular junctions (NMJs) in ALS by studying the role of local axonal translation in the maintenance and loss of axons and NMJs and by screening for therapeutics that improve muscle innervation using a miniaturized motor neuron/muscle co-culture platform.

X: @BlurtonJonesLab

Mathew Blurton-Jones earned his Ph.D. in Neurosciences at the University of California, San Diego in 2002. His postdoctoral studies were pursued in the labs of Dr. Carl Cotman and Dr. Frank LaFerla at UC Irvine. As a postdoctoral fellow and then Assistant Researcher, Dr. Blurton-Jones studied the pathogenesis of Alzheimer disease (AD), transgenic modeling of neurodegeneration, and begun to examine the use of stem cells to treat AD. In July of 2011, Dr. Blurton-Jones joined the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior as an Assistant Professor and established his independent lab in the Sue and Bill Gross Stem Cell Center.

The primary focus of his lab is to examine the underlying molecular mechanisms that drive the development of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Parkinson’s disease (PD). His lab uses stem cells, including patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), to study the role of neural and immune cell populations in these disorders. They also generate and use transgenic mouse models of AD and PD to test potential therapies and examine the relationships between peripheral and central immunity and their influence on disease progression. Among our current studies, they are using iPSCs to generate human microglia and understand the effects of disease-associated genetic risk factors on microglial function and AD pathology. Working with immune-deficient AD mouse models, they have also recently uncovered an important role for the adaptive immune system in AD, finding that peripheral immune populations slow the development of beta-amyloid pathology by modulating microglial function. In collaboration with colleagues in the UCI Institute for Immunology, Dr. Blurton-Jones is now further examining the role of peripheral immune senescence in AD and determining precisely which adaptive immune cell populations are responsible for the observed effects on disease progression.

X: @jungsukim77

Jungsu Kim graduated Summa Cum Laude in 2000 from Pohang University of Science & Technology in Korea with a bachelor’s degree in life science. He earned his Ph.D. from Mayo Clinic College of Medicine in 2007 under the guidance of Dr. Todd Golde and completed his postdoctoral training at Washington University in the laboratory of Dr. David Holtzman. After 3 years of postdoctoral training, he established his laboratory at Washington University, as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurology. In June 2013, Dr. Kim joined the Department of Neuroscience at Mayo Clinic. After 5 years of tenure as a Senior Associate Consultant I at Mayo Clinic, Dr. Kim relocated his laboratory to the Stark Neurosciences Research Institute at IU School of Medicine in 2018.

Research in Kim lab is aimed at developing therapeutic strategies for Alzheimer’s disease by targeting microglial proteins implicated in neuroinflammation as well as brain lipid-regulating proteins, such as apolipoprotein E (ApoE), low density lipoprotein receptor (LDLR), and ATP-binding cassette transporter A1 (ABCA1). Kim lab is also interested in the role of epigenetics and non-coding RNAs in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease and other aging-associated neurodegenerative diseases. Emerging transcriptomics technologies recently revealed that many non-coding regions encode functional RNAs, such as microRNAs (miRNAs) and long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs).

Using genetically modified animal models, human biospecimens, induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC), emerging single-cell transcriptomics, single-cell proteomics, and systems biology approaches, Kim lab investigates the function of multiple microglial proteins, ApoE-binding proteins, and non-coding RNAs that may play critical roles in neurodegenerative diseases and brain aging.

As a clinician, Dr. Kim obtained his M.D. at Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea in 1998. After graduating medical school, he trained in Seoul National University Hospital from 1998-2003 (1 year internship and 4 years residency in Dept. of Ophthalmology). As a specialist of ophthalmology, he served as a public health doctor for three years (2003-2006). Since 2007, he has worked as a clinical faculty of pediatric ophthalmology in Seoul National University Hospital.

As a scientist, Dr. Kim earned his Ph.D. in Seoul National University College of Medicine in 2006. He was mentored by Prof. Kyu-Won Kim (Vascular biology) and Prof. Young Suk Yu (Ophthalmology, Retina). His research has been focused on translational research targeting vaso-proliferative retinopathy such as retinopathy of prematurity, diabetic retinopathy, age-related macular degeneration as well as retinoblastoma. Like many clinician-scientists, his research was inspired by the patient, although he has been somewhat more productive than most. Since 2010, he has been an assistant professor/ associate professor/ professor in Department of Medical Sciences, Clinical Sciences, and Ophthlamology, Seoul National University College of Medicine.

His research interests are as follows; 1) Blood- Retinal Barrier: Regulatory mechanism to form and maintain blood-retinal barrier at the interface of neurogenesis, gliogenesis and angiogenesis, 2) Retinal vascular diseases following blood-retinal barrier: Retinopathy of prematurity, diabetic retinopathy, age-related macular degeneration, 3) Tumor angiogenesis in retinoblastoma, and 4) Normal eye development.

As a clinician, Dr. Kim obtained his M.D. at Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea in 1998. After graduating medical school, he trained in Seoul National University Hospital from 1998-2003 (1 year internship and 4 years residency in Dept. of Ophthalmology). As a specialist of ophthalmology, he served as a public health doctor for three years (2003-2006). Since 2007, he has worked as a clinical faculty of pediatric ophthalmology in Seoul National University Hospital.

As a scientist, Dr. Kim earned his Ph.D. in Seoul National University College of Medicine in 2006. He was mentored by Prof. Kyu-Won Kim (Vascular biology) and Prof. Young Suk Yu (Ophthalmology, Retina). His research has been focused on translational research targeting vaso-proliferative retinopathy such as retinopathy of prematurity, diabetic retinopathy, age-related macular degeneration as well as retinoblastoma. Like many clinician-scientists, his research was inspired by the patient, although he has been somewhat more productive than most. Since 2010, he has been an assistant professor/ associate professor/ professor in Department of Medical Sciences, Clinical Sciences, and Ophthlamology, Seoul National University College of Medicine.

His research interests are as follows; 1) Blood- Retinal Barrier: Regulatory mechanism to form and maintain blood-retinal barrier at the interface of neurogenesis, gliogenesis and angiogenesis, 2) Retinal vascular diseases following blood-retinal barrier: Retinopathy of prematurity, diabetic retinopathy, age-related macular degeneration, 3) Tumor angiogenesis in retinoblastoma, and 4) Normal eye development.

X: @SynapsesInSight

As a Barry M. Goldwater Scholar, Melanie Samuel earned three bachelor’s degrees from the University of Idaho (summa cum laude) and then completed her Ph.D. at Washington University studying neurotropic viral pathogenesis with Michael Diamond. As a postdoctoral fellow with Joshua Sanes at Harvard University she developed the retina as a model for synaptic aging. Her interdisciplinary research group leverages nanoscopic imaging technologies and high throughput in vivo molecular studies of single cells and their circuits in order to identify ways to repair neural networks.

Her past awards include those from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation, the Brain Research Foundation and a Pathway to Independence Award from the NIH, and the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award.