Do you ever wonder about what you can do to prevent or delay the onset of Familial Alzheimer's Disease? Join the Q & A with Dr. Rudy Tanzi
About the event
During this conversation, Dr. Tanzi will teach us about the role a person’s lifestyle can play in Alzheimer’s disease. We will also discuss what lifestyle modifications recommended for sporadic Alzheimer's disease might apply to familial Alzheimer’s disease. Lindsay Hohsfield will be asking Dr. Tanzi questions from our community.
This event is open to anyone in the Dominant Inherited Alzheimer's Disease and Autosomal Dominant community.
About Dr. Rudy Tanzi
Did you know Dr. Tanzi discovered our faulty genes?
Dr. Rudy Tanzi is the Director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit, Director of the Henry and Allison McCance Center for Brain Health, and Co-Director of the MassGeneral Institute for Neurodegenerative Disease at Massachusetts General Hospital. He also serves as the Joseph P. and Rose F. Kennedy Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Tanzi co-discovered the first Alzheimer’s disease (AD) gene, the amyloid precursor protein (APP) gene, and the two other early-onset familial AD genes, presenilin 1 and presenilin 2.
As leader of the Cure Alzheimer’s Fund Alzheimer’s Genome Project, Dr. Tanzi identified several other AD genes, including CD33, the first AD gene shown to regulate neuroinflammation in AD. He also discovered the Wilson’s disease gene and contributed to the identification of several other neurological disease genes, including the first familial ALS gene, SOD1.
Dr. Tanzi’s team was the first to use human stem cells to create three-dimensional mini human brain organoids and 3D neural-glial culture models of AD, dubbed “Alzheimer’s-in-a-Dish”. These models were the first to recapitulate all three key AD pathological hallmarks and have made drug screening exponentially faster and cheaper. He and his team have successfully used these organoids to screen for approved drugs and natural products that can be repurposed to treat AD brain pathology. Combinations of these drugs are now being tested in AD clinical trials.
Dr. Tanzi has help to develop several novel therapies for AD including gamma secretase modulators targeting amyloid pathology, for which a phase 1 clinical trial is being prepared. Dr. Tanzi has helped establish numerous biotech companies, including Amylyx, which developed the newly approved ALS drug, Relyvrio™. Dr. Tanzi also recently discovered that beta-amyloid plays a functional role in the brain as a host-defense peptide, leading to the “antimicrobial protection hypothesis” of AD.
Dr. Tanzi serves as Chair of the Cure Alzheimer’s Fund Research Leadership Group and on numerous scientific advisory and editorial boards. He has published over nearly 700 research papers (>150,000 citations) and is one of the top 50 most cited neuroscientists in the world.
He has received the highest awards in his field, including the Metropolitan Life Foundation Award, Potamkin Prize, Ronald Reagan Award, Oneness in Humanity Award, Silver Innovator Award, the Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award, the Brain Research Foundation Award, and the Kary Mullis Award for Medical Research.
He was named to TIME magazine’s list of TIME100 Most Influential People in the World. Dr. Tanzi is also a New York Times bestselling author, who has co-authored the books Decoding Darkness, and bestsellers, Super Brain, Super Genes, and The Healing Self, for which he has hosted several television shows on PBS.
Event recap
After the event, we posted a video and a writeup for those who were unable to attend live. View them here.
Registration is now closed, but the registration page on Eventbrite can be found here.