January 25, 2013
Spring neuroscience seminar series kicks off with talk on Alzheimer’s Disease on Feb 7
Dr. Klein is Professor of Neurobiology & Physiology, and of Neurology at Northwestern University and he kicks of the c...
The Lake Forest College Neuroscience Program, Nu Rho Psi (the national neuroscience honorary) and SYNAPSE (the neuroscience student organization) invites the public to a lecture entitled “Neurobiology of Alzheimer’s Disease” by Dr. William Klein on Thursday, February 7 at 4:15 pm, in Meyer Auditorium located in Hotchkiss Hall. A reception will begin at 4:00 pm.
Dr. Klein is a Professor of Neurobiology & Physiology, and of Neurology at Northwestern University. Formerly Director of Northwestern’s Interdepartmental Graduate Program in Neuroscience, Dr. Klein currently is a member of the university’s Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer’s Disease Center and the Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center.
Dr. Klein’s lab has pioneered the concept that memory loss in Alzheimer’s Disease is initiated by soluble amyloid beta oligomers, small neurotoxins that target particular synapses and cause their functional and structural degeneration.
After graduating from MIT in biology, Dr. Klein carried out predoctoral studies in protein biochemistry at UCLA with Paul Boyer (Nobel Prize, Chemistry) and postdoctoral studies in molecular neurobiology at the National Institutes of Health with Marshall Nirenberg (Nobel Prize, Physiology and Medicine). His research team at Northwestern has provided new insights into physiological synaptic signal transduction and cell biology, and more recently into the pathobiology of synapses in Alzheimer’s Disease.
In a seminal contribution, Dr. Klein’s team discovered that amyloid fibrils are not the only neurotoxins formed by Aβ peptide and likely not the most important ones: Aβ also generates small, soluble oligomers that are long-lived CNS neurotoxins capable of destroying the synaptic basis for memory and ultimately causing nerve cell death. Klein’s team established that toxic oligomers (also known as ADDLs) are a major feature of Alzheimer’s disease neuropathology through use of unique toxin-sensitive antibodies now under development for therapeutics. Their discovery that ADDLs are highly elevated in CSF of Alzheimer’s patients offers promise as a diagnostic biomarker.
By explaining why Alzheimer’s is a disease of memory and accounting for major pathological changes of Alzheimer’affected brain, ADDL toxicity provides a unifying molecular mechanism for pathogenesis, underscoring the importance of ADDLs as targets for clinical diagnostics and disease-modifying therapeutics.
The event is open and free to the public. Parking is available on Middle Campus (enter at the College and Sheridan Road intersection).
News Contact
Shubhik K. DebBurman, PhDProfessor of Biology
Chair, Neuroscience Program
email: debburman@lfc.edu
Phone: 847-735-6040