Tuesday, January 17, 2017 at 1:00pm to 2:00pm
Pharmacy- Paramaz Avedisian ’54 Hall, 130
7 Greenhouse Road, Kingston, R.I.
Matthew Havrda, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Molecular and Systems Biology,
Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, Hanover, NH
A role for neuroinflammation in the progression of Parkinson’s disease (PD) is supported by patient studies, animal models of PD, GWAS studies, and large-scale epidemiologic studies. This recognition of disease-associated neuroinflammation has not resulted in new diagnostic tools or treatments for PD because we do not yet fully understand how neuroinflammation impacts the neurodegenerative process or have tools to reliably monitor neuroinflammation during PD progression. This seminar will provide an overview of neuroinflammation in the context of PD and introduce the Nlrp3 inflammasome as a potential mediator of PD associated neuroinflammation. Animal studies supported by mechanistic data will be presented that reveal a role for Nlrp3 in mediating nigral cell loss along with systemic and neurologic inflammatory changes resulting from pesticide exposure in mice. Expanding these studies to PD patients, histologic data will be provided indicating that dopaminergic neurons surviving in late stage PD patients express elevated levels of NLRP3. These findings will be supported by genomic and mechanistic data characterizing an NLRP3 variant associated with a reduced risk of developing PD identified using the newly available Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative (PPMI) exome-sequence database. Concluding remarks will highlight future plans and introduce new experiments designed to identify undiscovered neuroprotective pathways through the analysis of biofluids and tissues obtained from PD patients.
Dr. Havrda is a candidate for Assistant Professor in the George & Anne Ryan Institute for Neuroscience.
Tristan Davies
4018744471
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