NEXT TALK: Next talk 31st of October, 7pm - Sesonal mood disorders
Cittie Of Yorke, 22 High Holborn, WC1V 6BN
What you shouldn't forget about Alzheimer's
2013/05/28
Our most complex organ is the brain, it is what makes us who we are. We have to pay the biggest price when something goes wrong; we might lose our memories and lose ourselves with them. John Hardy finds genes which cause neurologic diseases. The best way to look for these is to work closely with families who have high prevalence of brain disease. Once they identify the gene, they can look the position of the mistakes in the gene and reveal the mechanism which might lead to the disease and use the information to screen individuals' risk of developing it.
John Hardy is the director of the Institute of Neurobiology at UCL where he works on neurodegenerative disorders. In 1991 he found the first mutation in the amyloid gene that caused Alzheimer’s disease, whilst at Imperial College. After moving to NIH in the US, he worked on the research that found triplications in the synuclein gene, which caused Parkinson’s disease. He returned to the Institute of Neurology (UCL) in 2007 and most recently has led the group which found the first high risk variant for Alzheimer's disease found for 20 years.
