Neurodegenerative diseases, like Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease impact millions of patients and their families, and no effective treatments exist. As a dementia specialist, I take care of patients with a variety of cognitive disorders. In the clinic, I am struck by how little we have available to truly change the disease course. While supportive treatments exist, and we now have a disease-modifying therapy for Alzheimer's disease that modestly slows disease progression, there is a clear need for new and better therapies.
Past drug discovery in Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative disorders have focused on the misfolded proteins that accumulate in these diseases (e.g., amyloid beta and tau). It is clear that we need to identify newer targets that are precise to the disease and upstream of protein accumulation.
My lab's research focuses on the role of the endolysosomal system in aging and neurodegeneration. We are particularly interested in how cell-type and region specific dysfunction contributes to disease mechanism. We use a combination of mouse models and iPSC-derived (e.g., human cell culture) models to answer these key questions.
In April 2026, the Lane-Donovan lab will be opening on the 4th floor of Sandler Neurosciences at UCSF. We are excited to continue our work understanding the underlying mechanisms in neurodegenerative diseases. We are hiring postdoctoral fellows and junior or assistant specialists, please reach out if you are interested in joining our team!