Driving Directions:Guests may enter the building from 55th or 56th Street (between 5th and Madison)
Speaker Profiles
Michael Shelanski, MD, PhD (Speaker)
Department Chairman, Pathology, Columbia University Medical Center
Our laboratory is investigating the mechanism of memory disruption and synaptic dysfunction in Alzheimer’s Disease. We use a combination of cell culture and transgenic animal approaches in an attempt to understand why the overexpression of the amyloid precursor protein (APP) or direct application of its active peptide, A-beta, inhibits intracellular signaling in neuronal cells and leads to alterations of electrical activity, dendritic spine morphology and behavior. These results are extended with analyses of neurons taken from post-mortem Alzheimer’s Disease brains. In the past two years our attention has been on the PKA-CREB signaling pathway and on the role of ubiquitin c-terminal hydrolase-L1 (Uch-L1) in regulating these events. We have used both drugs and protein transduction techniques to show that A-beta induced changes, both in culture and in the animal, can be reversed by restoring these pathways to their normal “balance”. Other projects involve the induction of neurogenesis in neural stem cells by A-beta raising the possibility of an endogenous repair mechanism in AD, and the analysis of the action of the ginkgolides on neuronal function. The laboratory approaches these questions with a wide range of tools including biochemistry, cell biology, physiology and microscopy.
Dr. Shelanski received his Ph.D. degree in 1967 and his M.D. in 1966 from the University of Chicago. He is Director of the Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer’s Disease and the Aging Brain.
Christopher Gardner, MBA 1980 (Speaker)
Co-founder, iValue LLC
Christopher Gardner is the author of the highly acclaimed book The Valuation of Information Technology: A Guide for Strategy Development, Valuation, and Financial Planning which was favorably reviewed by the Harvard Business School, and Measuring Value in Healthcare (2008) highlighted as among the best papers on the science website arXiv.org. Mr. Gardner was educated at Chicago where he received his MBA in Finance and a BS in Physics.
Jie Wu Pan (Speaker)
Manager, Life Sciences, iValue LLC
Jie Wu Pan is a biophysicist. She is a specialist in electron paramagnetic resonance, membrane proteins, ion channels, biochemistry, molecular biology, and forensics biology. She has performed molecular biological and biochemical experiments to study protein structures, collected functional and structural information on the proteins by borrowing techniques from physics and biology, and quantitatively analyzed experimental data and built molecular models through computer simulation.
Dr. Wu Pan has a Ph.D. in Biophysics from the University of Virginia and a B.S. in Biological Sciences from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC). She was a Research Associate at the University of Chicago from 2005-2007.