Summer 2020 E-Newsletter

In This Issue:

• Easton Center Welcomes New Director
• Discovery of Dual Inhibitors for the Treatment of Alzheimer’s Disease
• New Addition to the Easton Center
• Clinical Research Opportunities
• Upcoming Events

The Mary S. Easton Center for Alzheimer’s Disease Research at UCLA has very active teams working on basic research, drug discovery, biomarkers for early diagnosis and clinical activity including clinical trials, cognitive testing, and patient care. 

Easton Center Welcomes New Director

We would like to welcome Keith Vossel, MD, MSc as the new Director of the Mary S. Easton Center for Alzheimer’s Disease Research at UCLA.

Dr. Vossel received a master’s degree in biomedical engineering and medical degree with highest honors from the University of Tennessee, Memphis. He completed neurology residency at Harvard - Massachusetts General and Brigham and Women's Hospitals, where he served as a chief resident. Following residency, Dr. Vossel completed fellowship training in behavioral neurology and postdoctoral training in neurodegenerative disease laboratory research at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and Gladstone Institutes. At UCSF and the University of Minnesota, Dr. Vossel created comprehensive research programs investigating Alzheimer's disease with a focus on brain rhythm abnormalities and translational therapies.

Dr. Vossel has made major contributions to the Alzheimer’s field in both basic science and clinical research. He discovered that Alzheimer’s disease patients often experience seizures that had previously been unrecognized. Dr. Vossel pioneered the use of extended electroencephalography and magnetoencephalography recordings to study Alzheimer’s disease. Using this technology, Dr. Vossel was the first to identify that silent seizure activity, detected during sleep, occurs in over 40% of patients with Alzheimer’s disease and accelerates cognitive decline. From this finding, Dr. Vossel initiated, and recently completed, a phase 2 clinical trial of an antiseizure drug to treat silent seizure activity and associated cognitive impairments in Alzheimer’s disease. Dr. Vossel also uses brain wave recordings to identify changes in brain rhythms in early-stage Alzheimer’s disease, as markers of disease progression as well as response to therapy.

In the laboratory, Dr. Vossel is investigating how the disease protein tau contributes to seizures and associated memory loss in Alzheimer’s disease as well as dementia with Lewy bodies. He is currently testing novel tau modifications and antiseizure drugs to prevent seizures and memory loss in scientific models of Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders.

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