Targeting Insulin Resistance for the Treatment of Alzheimer's Disease: From Laboratory to the Clinic

Speakers

Organizers

Mercedes Beyna, MS

Pfizer Global Research and Development

Mercedes Beyna is a research scientist at Pfizer, where she is using biochemical and imaging approaches in the quest to understand the biology underlying various psychiatric disorders. She also performs molecular and cellular biology-based target identification and assay development functions. Captivated by neuroscience, she has worked in the field for over 10 years, in both academic and industrial laboratory settings. Before joining pharmaceutical R&D, Mercedes held lab manager and senior lab technician positions at New York University (NYU). Her experience includes molecular neurobiology, synapse formation and plasticity, neurotrophin signaling, and developmental neurobiology areas. Mercedes attended Binghamton University, earning her undergraduate degree in Biology, and subsequently received her Master's Degree in Biology from NYU. As the Pfizer lead in the Biochemical Pharmacology Discussion Group at the New York Academy of Sciences, she enjoys developing interesting and educational symposia.

Cathleen Gonzales

Pfizer Global Research and Development

Cathleen Gonzales is Principal Scientist in the Neurodegeneration and Neurological Disorders group within the Neuroscience Research Unit located in Cambridge, MA. She has extensive pharmaceutical industry experience primarily in Alzheimer's disease and stroke, leading a preclinical drug discovery team for stroke. Her areas of expertise include in vivo pharmacology and behavioral models of motor dysfunction, memory and cognition. She was the recipient of the 2007 Junior Scientist of the Year Award at Wyeth Pharmaceuticals for her work in the Alzheimer's disease program. Prior to working in industry, she had several years of academic research experience in neuroanatomy and histological techniques with an emphasis on basal ganglia neurobiology.

Barbara Petrack, PhD

Drew University

Barbara Petrack is a RISE Fellow biochemist at Drew University, Madison, NJ, where for 16 years she has mentored students doing research projects. She now collaborates with Roger Knowles, Drew Neurobiologist, in research on Alzheimer's disease. Previously, Barbara was Senior Research Fellow at Novartis, with 35 years in one company (Novartis, CIBA.Geigy, Geigy). She is a NYAS Fellow, has a PhD in Biochemistry from NYU Medical School, followed by a 3-year Post-doc at Rockefeller University in the Laboratory of Fritz Lipmann (Nobel Laureate).

Jennifer Henry, PhD

The New York Academy of Sciences

Speakers

Suzanne M. de la Monte, MD, MPH

Brown University

Dr. Suzanne M. de la Monte received her undergraduate and medical degrees from Cornell University, and MPH from The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She completed an Anatomic Pathology residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital, and Neuropathology fellowship at the Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School. She is currently Professor of Pathology (Division of Neuropathology), Neurosurgery, and Neurology, and holds an appointment in the Dept. of Medicine. Her research is mainly focused on mechanisms and consequences of brain insulin resistance in relation to neurodegeneration and development. Her research helped sculpt the concept that Alzheimer's is a form of brain diabetes. Dr. de la Monte also teaches molecular neuroscience, neuropathology, and research methodology, and she serves on a number of academic and advisory committees at Brown, Rhode Island Hospital, and National Institutes of Health.

William H. Frey II, PhD

Alzheimer's Research Center, Regions Hospital, St. Paul, MN

Dr. William H. Frey II is Director of the Alzheimer's Research Center at Regions Hospital in St. Paul, MN, Professor of Pharmaceutics and faculty member in Neurology and Neuroscience at the University of Minnesota and consultant to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry. His patents, owned by Novartis, Stanford University, HealthPartners Research Foundation and others, target noninvasive delivery of therapeutic agents, including stem cells, to the brain and spinal cord for treating neurological and psychiatric disorders. Dr. Frey's noninvasive intranasal method for bypassing the blood-brain barrier to target CNS therapeutic agents to the brain while reducing systemic exposure and unwanted side effects has captured the interest of both pharmaceutical companies and neuroscientists. The intranasal insulin treatment he developed for Alzheimer's disease has been shown in clinical trials to improve memory in both Alzheimer's patients and normal adults. With over 100 publications in scientific and medical journals, Dr. Frey has been interviewed on Good Morning America, The Today Show, 20/20, All Things Considered and numerous other shows in the U.S., Europe and Asia. Articles about Dr. Frey's research have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and other magazines and newspapers around the world. Dr. Frey earned his BA in Chemistry at Washington University in 1969 and PhD in Biochemistry at Case Western Reserve University in 1975.

José A. Luchsinger, MD, MPH

Columbia University Medical Center

Jose Luchsinger is an Associate Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at Columbia University Medical Center. He is the PI of a clinical trial of metformin in Alzheimer's disease prevention and is co-investigators in several studies exploring the relation of insulin resistance with cognition.

Mark P. Mattson, PhD

National Institute on Aging, NIH

After receiving his PhD degree from the University of Iowa, Dr. Mattson completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Developmental Neuroscience at Colorado State University. He then joined the Sanders-Brown Center on Aging and the Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine as an Assistant Professor. Dr. Mattson was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor with tenure and then to Full Professor. In 2000, Dr. Mattson took the position of Chief of the Laboratory of Neurosciences at the National Institute on Aging in Baltimore, where he leads a multi-faceted research team that applies cutting-edge technologies in research aimed at understanding molecular and cellular mechanisms of brain aging and the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative disorders. He is also a Professor in the Department of Neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine where he is the director of a course on the Neurobiology of Aging. Dr. Mattson has received many awards including the Metropolitan Life Foundation Medical Research Award, the Alzheimer's Association Zenith Award, the Jordi Folch Pi Award, the Santiago Grisolia Chair Prize, the Tovi Comet-Walerstein Science Award and several Grass Lectureships. He was elected an AAAS Fellow in 2011. He is Editor-in-Chief of Ageing Research Reviews and NeuroMolecular Medicine and has been/is a Managing or Associate Editor of the Journal of Neuroscience, Trends in Neurosciences, the Journal of Neurochemistry, the Neurobiology of Aging, and the Journal of Neuroscience Research.

Ewan C. McNay, PhD

University at Albany, SUNY

Ewan McNay holds appointments in Behavioral Neuroscience and Biology at SUNY Albany, and an adjunct appointment in Endocrinology at Yale. His work focuses on metabolic regulation of cognitive processes, largely focused on hippocampal function and with an emphasis on disease states that cause brain metabolic dysregulation, such as type 2 diabetes and Alzheimer's disease. Dr. McNay's work began with investigation of the mechanisms by which glucose acts to enhance hippocampal function, which improved understanding of brain glucose supply and demand, and has recently included demonstration of a key role for endogenous insulin signaling in hippocampal mnemonic processing; additional recent work has looked at the molecular impact of both insulin and beta-amyloid within the hippocampus, and at the interaction between these two proteins.

Konrad Talbot, PhD

University of Pennsylvania

Dr. Konrad Talbot received his PhD in behavioral neuroscience from UCLA in 1989. After teaching that subject as an assistant professor at Mount St. Mary's College in California (1990-1995) and St. Olaf College in Minnesota (1995–1997), he pursued a different career as a postmortem Alzheimer's disease (AD) investigator. This began with a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn, 1997–2001) and continued at the same university with appointments as a senior research investigator (2001–2007) and subsequently a research assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry. In that department, Dr. Talbot has helped identify novel molecular pathologies contributing to cognitive deficits in both schizophrenia and AD. The latter are most relevant here. Working with experts in AD (Dr. John Trojanowski) and diabetes (Dr. Bryan Wolf) at Penn, Dr. Talbot sought the molecular basis for connections between those disorders initially suggested by epidemiological studies. In 2003, he discovered postmortem immunohistochemical evidence that the brain in AD was insulin resistant even in the absence of diabetes, for which he received a T.L.L. Temple Foundation Discovery Award from the Alzheimer's Association. Using a novel ex vivo stimulation paradigm, Dr. Talbot and Dr. Hoau-Yan Wang at CUNY have now provided the first direct demonstration of brain insulin (and IGF-1) resistance in AD and shown its likely molecular causes and cognitive effects (J. Clin. Invest. 122: 1316-1338, 2012). Working with Dr. Wang and Dr. Christian Hölscher at Ulster University, Dr. Talbot's group focuses increasingly on translational studies given its finding that brain insulin resistance is greatly reduced with the FDA-approved antidiabetic liraglutide (Victoza).