News and Events | Page 12 | Helen & Robert Appel Alzheimer’s Disease Research Institute

Congratulations! Debra Abramov from Burré lab has received a NRSA F30 fellowship from the NICHD

Debra Abramov from the Burré Lab has received a NRSA F30 fellowship from the NICHD, to investigate how Munc18-1 mutations disrupt syntaxin-5 stability and general secretory trafficking.

Despite a known genetic cause, no effective treatments exist for Munc18-1 related disorders, which cause intractable epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, and other severe neurologic symptoms in children. The aim of my proposal is to investigate the non-synaptic neuronal deficits that are caused by...

Congratulations! New R01 Awarded to Dr. Jacqueline Burré

Dr. Burrés team will investigate the impact of synaptic vesicle-binding of alpha-synuclein on alpha-synuclein function and neuron survival, using rationally designed variants of alpha-synuclein that stabilize synaptic vesicle-binding. Their study will determine if stabilizing binding of alpha-synuclein on synaptic vesicles reduces alpha-synuclein toxicity and pathology, which will provide important insights into treatment strategies for Parkinson’s disease.

Dr. Jacqueline Burré: Winner of the BMRI Mentor of the Year Award in Neuroscience!

This award consists of $10,000 for research-related expenses at the discretion of the winner. Nominations were received for 7 faculty members and were evaluated on areas of mentor-ship building, scientific training and communication. The review committee was impressed with all the nominations but felt that Dr. Burré deserved special recognition for her outstanding contribution to supporting research training in our community. Congratulations...

Distinguished Chemist, Dr. Subhash Sinha, Joining Appel Institute to Boost Translational Research

Dr. Sinha is a synthetic medicinal chemist at the Helen and Robert Appel Alzheimer’s Disease Research Institute, Brain and Mind Research Institute, Weill Cornell Medicine. Dr. Sinha received his doctorate in Chemistry-Medicinal Chemistry in 1987 from Banaras Hindu University, India. He completed postdoctoral training at Tohoku University, Japan, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Israel, and at The Scripps Research Institute, California. He joined the Scripps faculty as an Assistant...

An Unusual Mechanism of Pathogenic Aggregation of Cysteine String Protein-α (CSPα)

A new discovery published in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology (Naseri NN et al. Nat Struct & Mol Biol 27(2):192-201; 2020) clarifies the mechanism behind a neurodegenerative lysosomal storage disease: Mutations in cysteine string protein-α (CSPα) cause its aggregation and adult-onset neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis (ANCL or Kufs disease). Abnormal binding of Fe-S clusters to CSPα mutants is shown to drive this disease-causing aggregation, which can be reversed in...