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I am originally from Haiti. I obtained both my Bachelor’s
and Master’s degrees at Florida International
University (FIU) in the department of Biological Sciences.
I did my Master’s thesis under the supervision
of Dr. Ophelia Weeks, investigating the potentials of
lithium chloride (LiCl) as a therapeutic drug against
Alzheimer’s disease and its effect on cognition.
We showed that wild-type mice treated with a sub-therapeutic
dose of LiCl performed better than non-treated mice
in the spatial memory tasks of the Morris water maze.
Currently I am a PhD student at FIU with Dr. Ophelia
Weeks as my mentor and I am a Research Associate at
the Roskamp Institute in Sarasota (www.rfdn.org)
where I head the behavior Lab and am conducting my dissertation
research in the fields of Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience
in the laboratory of Dr. Ghania Ait-Ghezala.
I was part of the team that showed in 2004 that pharmacologically
interrupting CD40 receptor (a member of the Tumor Necrosis
Factor superfamily) interaction with its ligand (CD40L)
in a transgenic mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease
improved both spatial and non-spatial memory when compared
to non-treated controls. Subsequently my dissertation
project consists of investigating the relevance of CD40/CD40L
pathways in amyloid precursor protein (APP) processing.
To achieve this goal, we are generating different DNA
constructs to establish cell lines to allow us to further
investigate this pathway. We are also examining the
importance of inflammatory cytokines in CD40/CD40L interaction
and their significance for Alzheimer disease. Furthermore,
we are using state of the art genomic/proteomic approaches
to identify therapeutic targets for Alzheimer’s
disease.
Ait-Ghezala G, Mathura VS, Laporte V, Quadros A, Paris
D, Patel N, Volmar CH, Kolippakkam D, Crawford F, Mullan
M. Genomic regulation after CD40 stimulation in microglia:
relevance to Alzheimer's disease. Brain Res Mol Brain
Res. 2005 Oct 31; 140(1-2):73-85.
Roach JT, Volmar CH, Dwivedi S, Town T, Crescentini
R, Crawford F, Tan J, Mullan M. Behavioral effects of
CD40-CD40L pathway disruption in aged PSAPP mice. Brain
Res. 2004 Jul 23; 1015(1-2):161-8.
A picture of HEK cells over-expressing both APP and
CD40.
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