Stanley Ben Prusiner is an American neurologist and biochemist. He is the director of the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Prusiner discovered prions, a class of infectious self-reproducing pathogens primarily or solely composed of protein, a scientific theory considered by many as a heretical idea when first proposed. He received the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research in 1994 and the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1997 for research on prion diseases developed by him and his team of experts beginning in the early 1970s.
Shinya Yamanaka is a Japanese stem cell researcher and a Nobel Prize laureate. He is a professor and the director emeritus of Center for iPS Cell Research and Application, Kyoto University; as a senior investigator at the UCSF-affiliated Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco, California; and as a professor of anatomy at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Yamanaka is also a past president of the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR).
Transmembrane protein 106B is a protein that is encoded by the TMEM106B gene. It is found primarily within neurons and oligodendrocytes in the central nervous system with its subcellular location being in lysosomal membranes. TMEM106B helps facilitate important functions for maintaining a healthy lysosome, and therefore certain mutations and polymorphisms can lead to issues with proper lysosomal function. Lysosomes are in charge of clearing out mis-folded proteins and other debris, and thus, play an important role in neurodegenerative diseases that are driven by the accumulation of various mis-folded proteins and aggregates. Due to its impact on lysosomal function, TMEM106B has been investigated and found to be associated to multiple neurodegenerative diseases.
John Quinn Trojanowski was an American academic research neuroscientist specializing in neurodegeneration. He and his partner, Virginia Man-Yee Lee, MBA, Ph.D., are noted for identifying the roles of three proteins in neurodegenerative diseases: tau in Alzheimer's disease, alpha-synuclein in Parkinson's disease, and TDP-43 in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal degeneration.
Samuel E. Gandy, is a neurologist, cell biologist, Alzheimer's disease (AD) researcher and expert in the metabolism of the sticky substance called amyloid that clogs the brain in patients with Alzheimer's. His team discovered the first drugs that could lower the formation of amyloid.
Anne Buckingham Young is an American physician and neuroscientist who has made major contributions to the study of neurodegenerative diseases, with a focus on movement disorders like Huntington's disease and Parkinson's disease. Young completed her undergraduate studies at Vassar College and earned a dual MD/PhD from Johns Hopkins Medical School. She has held faculty positions at University of Michigan and Harvard University. She became the first female chief of service at Massachusetts General Hospital when she was appointed Chief of Neurology in 1991. She retired from this role and from clinical service in 2012. She is a member of many academic societies and has won numerous awards. Young is also the only person to have been president of both the international Society for Neuroscience and the American Neurological Association.
HIV/AIDS research includes all medical research that attempts to prevent, treat, or cure HIV/AIDS, as well as fundamental research about the nature of HIV as an infectious agent and AIDS as the disease caused by HIV.
Virginia Man-Yee Lee is a Chinese-born American biochemist and neuroscientist who specializes in the research of Alzheimer's disease. She is the current John H. Ware 3rd Endowed Professor in Alzheimer's Research at the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, and the director of the Center for Neurodegenerative Disease Research and co-director of the Marian S. Ware Alzheimer Drug Discovery Program at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania. She received the 2020 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences.
Nevan J. Krogan is a Canadian molecular and systems biologist. He is a professor and the Director of the Quantitative Biosciences Institute (QBI) at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), as well as a senior investigator at the J. David Gladstone Institutes.
Benjamin Wolozin is an American pharmacologist and neurologist currently at Boston University School of Medicine. He is also an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Elaine L. Bearer is an American neuroscientist, pathologist, and composer.
Thea D. Tlsty is an American pathologist and professor of pathology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). She is known for her research in cancer biology and her involvement in the discovery of cells that may be at the origin of metaplastic cancer, an invasive form of breast cancer.
Çağhan Kızıl is a Turkish/German neuroscientist and geneticist, and Associate Professor of Neurological Sciences at the Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer's Disease and the Aging Brain at the Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons Columbia University Irving Medical Center.
LATE is a term that describes a prevalent medical condition with impaired memory and thinking in advanced age, often culminating in the dementia clinical syndrome. In other words, the symptoms of LATE are similar to those of Alzheimer's disease.
Dena Dubal is the David A. Coulter Endowed Chair in Ageing and Neurodegenerative Disease at University of California, San Francisco. Dubal has demonstrated that the hormone Klotho can enhance cognition and protect the brain from neurodegenerative decline.
Phenserine is a synthetic drug which has been investigated as a medication to treat Alzheimer's disease (AD), as the drug exhibits neuroprotective and neurotrophic effects.
Katerina Akassoglou is a neuroimmunologist who is a Senior Investigator and Director of In Vivo Imaging Research at the Gladstone Institutes. Akassoglou holds faculty positions as a Professor of Neurology at the University of California, San Francisco. Akassoglou has pioneered investigations of blood-brain barrier integrity and development of neurological diseases. She found that compromised blood-brain barrier integrity leads to fibrinogen leakage into the brain inducing neurodegeneration. Akassoglou is internationally recognized for her scientific discoveries.
Carmela R. Abraham is an American neuroscientist who focuses on the study of Alzheimer's disease.
David Rowitch, FMedSci, FRS is an American physician-scientist known for his contributions to developmental glial biology and treatment of white matter diseases. He heads the Department of Paediatrics at the University of Cambridge and is an adjunct professor of pediatrics at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF).
Li Gan is a neuroscientist and professor at Weill Cornell Medical College. She is known for her discovery of pathogenic tau protein acetylation in tauopathies and mechanisms of microglia dysfunction in neurodegeneration.
