Epigenetics of Alzheimer's Disease

Speakers

Organizers

Ottavio Arancio, MD, PhD

Columbia University Medical School

Dr. Ottavio Arancio received his Ph.D and M.D. from the University of Pisa (Italy). From 1981 to 1986 he took residency training in Neurology at the University of Verona (Italy). Dr. Arancio has held Faculty appointments at Columbia University, NYU School of Medicine and at SUNY HSCB. In 2004 he became Faculty member of the Dept of Pathology & Cell biology and The Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer’s Disease and the Aging Brain at Columbia University. His honors include the “G. Moruzzi Fellowship” (Georgetown University), the “Anna Villa Rusconi Foundation Prize” (Italy), the “INSERM Poste vert Fellowship” (France), the AHAF centennial Award (2007), the Zenith Award (2007), the Margaret Cahn Research Award (2008), and the Edward N. and Della L. Thome Memorial Foundation Award (2010).

Dr Arancio is a cellular neurobiologist who has contributed to the characterization of the mechanisms of learning in both normal conditions and during neurodegenerative diseases. During the last ten years he has pioneered the field of mechanisms of synaptic dysfunction in Alzheimer’s disease. Dr. Arancio’s laboratory has focused primarily on events triggered by amyloid protein. These studies, which have suggested new links between synaptic dysfunction and amyloid protein, are of a general relevance to the field of Alzheimer’s disease both for understanding the etiopathogenesis of the disease and for developing therapies aiming to improve the cognitive symptoms.

Dr. Arancio has been recently featured on "bigthink.com".

Cecilia Marta, PhD

Sanofi-Aventis

Cecilia Marta obtained her PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Buenos Aires Argentina in 2000 working on the neuroimmune interactions of neurodegenerative disorders. She then continue her work as a postdoctoral fellow and then Assistant Professor at the University of Connecticut Health Center focusing on the neurodegenerative aspects of Multiple Sclerosis. In late 2005, she joined the CNS Department of Sanofi-Aventis to conduct drug discovery in the area of Multiple Sclerosis. In the beginning of 2010, she joined the newly formed Therapeutic Strategic Unit of Aging within Sanofi in which today she is part of the Translational Medicine team. Neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's are part of the current strategic focus of the Unit.

Sonya Dougal, PhD

New York Academy of Sciences

Speakers

Paul D. Coleman, PhD

Sun Health Research Center

Paul Coleman received his undergraduate degree from Tufts (magna cum laude) and his Ph.D. from the University of Rochester. After a tour at the Army Medical Research Laboratory and a faculty position at Tufts he had a Special Fellowship at Johns Hopkins, working with Vernon Mountcastle and David Bodian. He then spent five years on the faculty at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, followed by more than 30 years as Professor in Neurobiology and Anatomy at the University of Rochester. During this time he spent portions of two summers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories, receiving training in molecular neurobiology, the latter summer with Jim Eberwine. He is now Professor Emeritus at the University of Rochester, Senior Scientist and Co-Director of Alzheimer Research at Banner Sun Health Research Institute. He is also Editor-in-Chief of “Neurobiology of Aging”.

J. David Sweatt, PhD

University of Alabama at Birmingham

J. David Sweatt obtained his B.S. in Chemistry from the University of South Alabama before attending Vanderbilt University, where he was awarded a Ph.D. for studies of intracellular signaling mechanisms. He then did a post-doctoral Fellowship at the Columbia University Center for Neurobiology and Behavior, working on memory mechanisms in the laboratory of Nobel laureate Eric Kandel. From 1989 to 2006 he was a member of the Neuroscience faculty at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, rising through the ranks there to Professor and Director of the Neuroscience Ph.D. program.

Dr. Sweatt’s laboratory studies biochemical mechanisms of learning and memory. In addition, his research program also investigates mechanisms of learning and memory disorders, such as mental retardation and aging-related memory dysfunction. He is currently the Evelyn F. McKnight endowed Chairman of the Department of Neurobiology at UAB Medical School, and the Director of the Evelyn F. McKnight Brain Institute at the University of Alabama in Birmingham. He also is a Professor the Departments of Molecular Physiology and Biophysics, Genetics, and Psychology at UAB.

From 1998 until 2002 he attended drawing and painting classes at the Glassell School of Art of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. As an artist he explores the use of painting as a medium for expressing topics of interest in contemporary biomedical research. In 2009 he published a textbook, Mechanisms of Memory, which is illustrated with original paintings and describes current models for the molecular and cellular basis of memory formation.

Li-Huei Tsai, PhD

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Li-­‐Huei Tsai is the director of the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Picower Professor of Neuroscience. She is also a Principal Investigator in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the director of the Neurobiology Program at the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute. Dr. Tsai received a PhD in microbiology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. She completed postdoctoral fellowships at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and the Massachusetts General Hospital. She became an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology at Harvard Medical School and, in 1997, she became an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. In 2006, Dr. Tsai became a Picower Professor of Neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and became the Director of the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory in 2009. Dr. Tsai’s work has aimed to elucidate the cellular and molecular mechanisms that contribute to the development and manifestation of the pathology and symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. Recently, Dr. Tsai’s laboratory has revealed that alternations of the epigenetic landscape can benefit cognition in Alzheimer’s disease animal models, even after severe neurodegeneration has occurred. These findings promise chromatin modifying enzymes to be potential targets for treatment of Alzheimer’s disease.

Benjamin Tycko, MD, PhD

Columbia University

Dr. Tycko is a Professor of Pathology and member of the Institute for Cancer Genetics at Columbia University. His work over the past two decades has centered on the role of DNA methylation in human development and disease. This work started with identification of human imprinted genes and their roles in Wilms tumor and Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome and has continued with recent discoveries of altered epigenetic patterns in cancer-associated stromal cells. The most recent work from the Tycko lab has dealt with the epigenetics of Down syndrome and Alzheimer’s disease. Recent publications on human genetics and epigenetics from Dr. Tycko’s laboratory have appeared in basic and clinical journals including Nature Genetics, PLOS Genetics, Cancer Research and JAMA, and he is an author of the chapter on Epigenetics in the fifth and current edition of Emery and Rimoin’s Principles and Practice of Medical Genetics.

Yitshak Francis, PhD

Columbia University Medical Center

Yitshak Francis (PhD) is an Associate Research Scientist at the Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer's Disease and the Aging Brain at Columbia University. Dr. Francis completed his undergraduate degree at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology where he graduated with honors. He obtained his PhD in Medical Molecular Biology from University College London, researching the role of epigenetics in Alzheimer’s disease under the direction of Professor David Latchman, renowned for his work in the field of transcription factors. During his work at Columbia University, Dr. Francis focused primarily on epigenetic changes triggered in Alzheimer’s disease. His research has led to the identification of novel epigenetics-modifying drugs. For his work Dr. Francis recently won the New Investigator research grant from the Alzheimer Association