An estimated 6.9 million Americans aged 60 and older are affected by Alzheimer's disease making it one of the most prevalent diseases in modern society. Few therapeutic options exist for Alzheimer’s patients including FDA-approved anti-β-amyloid immunotherapies, which can slow the progression of cognitive decline only to a limited degree. Our group is highly invested in driving the discovery of therapies aimed at preventing or halting advancement of this devastating affliction. We specialize in transgenic mouse models and cellular models of Alzheimer’s pathology including mouse lines which model deposition of b-amyloid and tau protein, biological hallmarks of Alzheimer’s, and those where neurodegeneration is induced by prion infection. Our experiments are designed to modulate Alzheimer’s pathology in these models by complete or conditional knock out or overexpression of proteins of interests which we hypothesize might contribute to neurodegeneration and progressive cognitive impairment.

Our team has extensive experience with a wide array of genetic, behavioral, microscopic, biochemical, proteomic, and transcriptomic techniques we use to characterize outcomes of our genetic manipulations in Alzheimer’s model mice. We aim to identify and characterize distinct mechanisms of neurodegeneration, which can be leveraged to develop novel therapeutic approaches for Alzheimer’s disease.