Associate Investigator, Neurology, Mass General Research Institute; Associate Professor of Neurology, Harvard Medical School; Research Staff, Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital
Wilma Wasco was always a promising student. As part of her education, she took honors chemistry without the prerequisite course, demonstrating her aptitude—and passion—for science. But when she accidentally cloned an amyloid precursor-like protein as a postdoctoral fellow, she began her lifelong career studying Alzheimer’s disease.
Dr. Wasco was part of an international effort that identified the familial Alzheimer’s disease-associated presenilin 1 (PS1) and presenilin 2 (PS2) genes. Her laboratory also identified genes that encode the two amyloid precursor-like proteins (APLP1 and APLP2) and calsenilin, a calcium-binding protein that interacts with the presenilin proteins. Her research has been focused on understanding the biological role that each of these AD-linked proteins plays in the normal, aging and diseased brain.
To learn more about Dr. Wasco, click here.