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On April 22, 2020, Hannah sucessfully defended her MS thesis (remotely, of course)! Congratulations, Hannah!
On April 16, 2020, Wenzhong's paper entitled "Brain-specific suppression of AMPKα2 isoform impairs cognition and hippocampal LTP by PERK-mediated eIF2α phosphorylation" has been officially accepted by "Molecular Psychiatry". Congratulations to Wenzhong and Sherry (co-first author), and all contributing authors.
On April 16, 2020, Xin's paper entitled "“Decreased levels of blood AMPKα1 but not AMPKα2 isoform in patients with mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease: a pilot study" has been officially accepted by "The Journal of Alzheimer's Disease". Congratulations to Xin, and all contributing authors.
On March 27, 2020, Saahj gave a wonderfuly public talk and sucessfully defended his MS thesis! Congratulations, Saahj!
On March 17, 2020, Helena's paper entitled "Brain-specific repression of AMPKα1 isoform alleviates pathophysiology in Alzheimer’s disease model mice" has been officially accepted by "The Journal of Clinical Investigation". Congratulations to Helena and Wenzhong (co-first author), and all contributing authors!
On September 4th, 2019, Wenzhong's paper entitled "Memory Decline and Behavioral Inflexibility in Aged Mice Are Correlated with Dysregulation of Protein Synthesis Capacity" has been officially published at the "Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience". Congratulatons to Wenzhong and Sherry!
Nicole is awarded the Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation (ADDF) Young Investigator Scholarship, and is invited for a podium talk at the 20th International Conference on Alzheimer's Drug Discovery on September 16 at Jersey City, NJ. Congratulations, Nicole!
On May 8, 2019, Nicole and Helena presented a translational talk entitled "In Search of Novel Biomarkers and Therapeutics for Alzheimer's Disease" as part of the Sticht Center Aging Conference series.
On May 1, 2019, Antoine (Dibs) Almonte joined the lab as a Resarch Assistant Professor. Welcome, Dibs!
On April 22, 2019, Jennifer Stern won the Florence Robinson Neuroscience Award, given each year to an outstanding Wake Forest student graduating with a minor in Neuroscience. Congratulations, Jen!
On April 12, 2019, Helena delivered a great seminar and sucessfully defended her PhD thesis entitiled "The Roles of AMP-Activated Protein Kinase α Isoforms in Alzheimer’s Disease". Congratulations, Dr. Zimmermann! Helena will work as a postdoctoral fellow at the laboratory of Dr. Robert Vassar at Northwestern University.
On February 1, 2019, our paper entitiled "Genetic reduction of eEF2 kinase alleviates pathophysiology in Alzheimer's disease model mice" has been officially published at The Journal of Clinical Investigatioin (JCI)!
https://www.jci.org/articles/view/122954
Congratulations to all the contributing authors, particularly Brenna and Wenzhong!
On December 7,2018, Steve (Stephen Day) gave a great seminar and sucessfully defended his PhD thesis entitiled "Glucagon-like peptide cleavage product as a potential therapeutic to improve cognition in Down syndrome". Congratulations, Dr. Day!
Nicole, Xin, Helena and Tao attended the Society for Neuroscience (SFN) Annual meeting on November 3-7 in San Diego. Nicole and Xin did poster presentation and Helena gave a talk at a nanosymposium that was chaired by Tao!
On October 27, the Ma lab participated in the Alzheimer's Association Walk to End Alzheimer's at Winston-Salem. Good job, everyone!
On September 22, Tao attended the first North Carolin State Go Championship Tournament in Raleigh and won 1st place in Division B.
On September 19, Tao was awarded Wake Forest School of Medicine Early Career in Basic Science Investigator Award.
Hannah Jester, Saahj Gosrani, and Adline Metayer joined the lab as master students. Welcome!
As an invited speaker, Tao presented“Impaired mRNA translational capacity is correlated with aging-dependent memory deficits and behavioral inflexibility” at the International Neuroscience and Psychiatry Summit in Tai’an, China.
The paper "Genetic Removal of eIF2α Kinase PERK in Mice Enables Hippocampal L-LTP Independent of mTORC1 Activity" has been officially published at "The Journal of Neurochemistry", and selected as a cover article with editorial highlight! Congratulations to all, particularly Helena and Wenzhong, who are the co-first authors.
July 22-26, Helena and Tao attended the Alzheimer's Association International Conference at Chicago. Helena presented a poster entitlied "Brain-specific repression of AMPKα1 alleviates memory deficits and synaptic failure in a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease".
On July 9, 2018, Dr. Qian Yang joined the lab as a research fellow. Qian got her PhD from Shanghai Jiaotong University in China, and she is an expert in electrophysiology. Welcome, Qian!
In June, Tao has been invited to serve as a member for the Cellular and Molecular Biology of Neurodegeneration (CMND) study section of NIH.
On April 16, 2018, Brenna successfully defended her PhD thesis entitled "The Role of Translation Elongation Deficits in Alzheimer's Disease Pathogenesis.". Congratulations, Dr. Beckelman!
On April 23, 2018, Xin successfully defended his MS thesis entitled "AMPKalpha Signaling Dysregulation in AD Monkey Model and Human AD Patients". Congratulations, Xin!
Brenna has been selected as the recipient of the Wake Forest Gordor A. Melson Outstanding Doctoral Student Award for 2018. Congratulations, Brenna!
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