Dr. Jie Shen to speak at the Geroscience Interest Group (GSIG)

What:              Seminar, Dr. Jie Shen, Harvard Medical School, Boston

When:             Thursday November 1, 2012, 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM

Where:             Lipsett Auditorium, Building 10, NIH

Title:                “Mechanisms of Age-Dependent Neurodegeneration in Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Diseases”

The Geroscience Interest Group (GSIG) cordially invites you to the seminar listed above. Dr. Shen is a Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. Her research interests focus on the physiological functions of gene products responsible for familial forms of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Parkinson’s disease (PD) in relevant neural circuits in the adult brain, and how disease-causing mutations in these gene products lead to age-dependent circuit dysfunction and neurodegeneration. Her laboratory has been the first to generate and analyze gene-targeted mice modeling loss of function for many of these familial AD and PD gene products. Through multidisciplinary investigations combining brain circuit-specific knockouts with electrophysiological and behavioral analyses, her group has uncovered essential roles for Presenilins in neurotransmitter release and neuronal survival in the adult brain. Her proposal that loss of Presenilin function in the adult brain may underlie dementia and neurodegeneration in familial AD, termed the “Presenilin hypothesis”, has been particularly influential and has garnered considerable media attention. In addition, her studies of familial PD genes have suggested that impairments in autophagy and mitochondrial function may be mechanistic precursors of dopaminergic neuronal dysfunction and degeneration.

The Geroscience Interest Group (GSIG) is a newly formed trans-NIH group aimed at enhancing opportunities for discussion of the intersection between the biology of aging and the biology of diseases and conditions that are of interest across ICs.   It is focused on basic biology, but with a longer view towards translation. If you are interested in learning more, please visit the GSIG web site (http://sigs.nih.gov/geroscience/Pages/default.aspx ).

The seminar will be videocast at http://videocast.nih.gov/ and archived in the GSIG web site. Sign language interpretation will be provided. Individuals with disabilities who need reasonable accommodation to participate may contact Dr. Felipe Sierra at Sierraf@nia.nih.gov or at 301.496.6402.

Page last updated: February 5, 2013