How neuronal stress and brain trauma may contribute to ALS pathogenesis

Daryl A. Bosco, PhD, is a professor of Neurology at UMass Chan Medical School. Dr. Bosco’s scientific career began with a PhD in bio-organic chemistry from Brandeis University in Massachusetts and a post-doctoral fellowship at the Scripps Research Institute in California, where she studied protein structure and misfolding in the context of neurodegeneration. Dr. Bosco was then an Instructor at Harvard Medical School in Massachusetts, where she began working on ALS. In 2008, Dr. Bosco established her independent research laboratory at UMass Chan Medical School. The Bosco Lab is ​​investigating the mechanisms underlying ALS and related disorders such as frontotemporal dementia.
Talk Description: The Bosco Lab is studying stress as an upstream trigger of neuron death in ALS. These studies are based on observations that neurons in ALS patients become overactivated because of both altered neuronal connections and metabolite imbalances within the central nervous system. Dr. Bosco will present recent research showing that ALS neurons are more susceptible to external stressors such as brain trauma.