Ryo Higuchi-Sanabria, PhD Portfolio Item

The Sanabria lab is generally interested in studying the intersection between stress and aging. Exposure to stress can be detrimental to cellular health and fitness, and thus cells have adapted cellular stress responses that mitigate damage associated with stress exposure. Interestingly, cellular stress mechanisms decline during aging, such that aged . . .

Katlin Silm, PhD Portfolio Item

A variety of age-linked neurodegenerative diseases affect an increasingly large number of people and we have limited understanding of the processes that lead to these disorders. Parkinson’s Disease (PD) is one of the most common neurodegenerative diseases and it features a selective loss of dopamine neurons that have a critical . . .

Fleur Ferguson, PhD Portfolio Item

Lewy body dementias such as Parkinson’s Disease are the third most common form of dementia after Alzheimer’s Disease, yet no disease-modifying therapies have been discovered. A hallmark of these conditions is the accumulation of misfolded protein deposits in the brain. However, the role of these aggregates in causing disease and . . .

Finn Wolfreys, PhD Portfolio Item

Fuchs dystrophy is a mostly late onset disease of the transparent surface of the eye, the cornea, which can cause painful swelling and blistering that eventually leads to blindness.  It affects approximately 4% of Americans over the age of 40, however, the exact mechanism by which the disease develops is . . .

Claire Clelland, MD, PhD Portfolio Item

The Clelland lab at UCSF is devoted developing new therapies for neurodegenerative diseases. Age-related neurodegenerative diseases, including dementias, are one of the most medically and economically consequential challenges facing our society. Some dementias clearly arise from mutations in single genes (such as C9orf72), raising the exciting possibility that gene therapy . . .

Andrew Folick, MD, PhD Portfolio Item

Microglia are brain-resident immune cells and have been identified as sensors of dietary excess and mediators of diet-induced hypothalamic dysfunction. Work in our lab and others has implicated microglia, particularly in the hypothalamus, in the pathogenesis obesity and diabetes. However, (1) how microglia are activated by an unhealthy high fat . . .

Amanda McQuade, PhD Portfolio Item

Genetic studies have implicated microglia, the brain’s innate immune cells, as critical players in neurodegeneration. In response, the field has focused on transcriptionally defining the diverse microglial activation states that occur across models of neurodegeneration. Through these efforts, we have discovered several new microglial activation states that are altered in . . .

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