January 11, 2022

New Models, Tools, and Targets for the Brain: Breakthroughs in Phosphoproteomics and Neurodegeneration with Nader Morshed from the White and Tsai Labs at MIT

1 hour 2 minutes

We discuss Nader's career from learning structural biology in the Marqusee and Alber Labs at UC Berkeley to his pioneering graduate work at MIT with Forest White and Li-Huei Tsai and now at Stevens at Harvard Medical School. The conversation is centered around the 2 groundbreaking papers he published while earning his PhD:

1. Phosphoproteomics identifies microglial Siglec-F inflammatory response during neurodegeneration

2. Quantitative phosphoproteomics uncovers dysregulated kinase networks in Alzheimer’s disease

His research uses phosphoproteomics to capture the heterogeneity in Alzheimer's disease progression and uncover new leads to understand neurodegeneration. Genetic studies like GWAS will only find risk factors so proteomics and other tools are needed to comprehensively understand new biology and disease. Nader's work is centered around new models, tools, and targets. In particular, we need better mouse models to capture the same genes and capture human pathology. For example, Nader's work has found glial cell protein clusters as a promising lead that increase in expression slightly later than tau but earlier than neurodegeneration. This observation would not have been captured by a purely genomics approach. I am sure the best is yet to come given the impact of his research. A favorite quote of mine after speaking with Nader is around his long-term goal to "inspire the next-generation of scientists."

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