Dr. Gilbert Hosts: Keeping Parkinson’s Research on Track
Sustaining Momentum: Research Supported by APDA Bridge Funding
In response to the difficult funding climate for Parkinson’s disease research, APDA launched the Bridge Funding Awards to sustain promising investigators facing unexpected gaps in support. These awards ensure that critical research continues without interruption. During this broadcast, you will hear from our three inaugural Bridge Funding awardees and explore how APDA is helping keep their Parkinson’s research moving forward.
- Dr. Franchino Porciuncula will discuss his work on strategies to improve the walking of someone with Parkinson’s disease
- Dr. Donghe Yang will discuss his work on generating dopamine neurons from stem cells
- Dr. Helen Hwang will discuss her work on cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers for Parkinson’s disease
ABOUT OUR SPEAKERS
Dr. Helen Hwang
Dr. Helen Hwang is a Movement Disorder Neurologist and an Instructor at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, MO. She obtained her BA and BS degrees in Psychology and Bioengineering from the University of California, San Diego. Following this, she matriculated at the MD/PhD program at the University of Illinois in Urbana, IL where she studied telomere biology with single molecule fluorescence under the mentorship of Dr. Sua Myong. Dr. Hwang then completed her Neurology and Movement Disorder training at Washington University. During her fellowship, she became interested in potential biomarkers and therapeutics for Parkinson’s disease (PD). She has developed an in-vitro fluorescence platform of alpha-synuclein (a-syn) fibril growth for screening small molecules for potential therapeutics for PD and is interested in expanding this work into a cellular model.
Dr. Franchino Porciuncula
Dr. Franchino Porciuncula is a Research Assistant Professor at Sargent College of Health & Rehabilitation Sciences at Boston University. Trained as a Physical Therapist and as a rehabilitation scientist, Dr. Porciuncula’s research focuses on developing innovative gait rehabilitation interventions in PD by targeting biomechanical, cognitive, and behavioral processes that underlie gait dysfunction. His research seeks to develop and leverage next-generation wearable technologies including sensors, robotics and digital health solutions to improve gait outcomes in PD. Dr. Porciuncula received his Doctorate in Motor Learning & Control from Columbia University and completed a Post-Doctoral Fellowship in clinical biomechanics at Harvard University, focusing on the development of wearable robots to improve walking in neurological disorders, including PD.
Dr. Donghe Yang
Dr. Donghe Yang is a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Lorenz Studer’s laboratory at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. His research focuses on leveraging cutting-edge genetic, human pluripotent stem cell (hPSC), and single-cell sequencing technologies to understand, model, and potentially treat neurodegenerative disorders such as PD. Dr. Yang received his PhD in 2022 from the University of Toronto in Canada under the mentorship of Dr. Gordon Keller. His PhD research focused on mapping evolutionarily conserved embryonic cardiac programs using hPSCs and single-cell transcriptomics. Currently, Dr. Yang’s postdoctoral research aims to dissect the development of midbrain dopaminergic neuron (mDA) subtypes, with a particular focus on generating the A9 mDA subtype, which is responsible for motor control and most susceptible to degeneration in PD patients. The goal is the generation of A9 mDA neurons to model PD in vitro and to develop novel cell replacement therapies for PD.