Time: 7:00-9:00 p.m., Wednesday, November 20th

Location: Armenise Amphitheater at Harvard Medical School, 200 Longwood Avenue, Boston (link to directions)

Speakers: Ada Shaw

Graphics: Rebecca Senft

In 2016, an estimated 5.4 million Americans were suffering from Alzheimer’s disease; 1 million from Parkinson’s; 400,000 and 30,000 from Huntington’s disease. These numbers are expected to increase as the population ages. One promising approach to studying the causes of neurodegenerative disease is to investigate the microscopic changes in brain tissues. In the first section of the talk, we will explore how prions – a class of harmful aggregating proteins – contribute to cases of neurodegeneration such as Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease and mad cow’s disease. However, other neurodegenerative diseases are less well understood. In the second part of this talk, we discuss Alzheimer’s Disease and the problems that hinder research and drug development. Finally, we introduce new research directions related to Alzheimer’s disease.