Director, The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory; Picower Professor of Neuroscience, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences; Senior Associate Member, Broad Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Co-Director, Alana Down Syndrome Center
Cure Alzheimer’s Fund Research Leadership Group
Li-Huei Tsai is a prominent neuroscientist whose groundbreaking discoveries into the molecular mechanisms underlying Alzheimer’s disease (AD) have challenged conventional understanding and advanced new avenues for exploring disease mechanisms. Among her numerous and noteworthy discoveries, Dr. Tsai has innovated a number of applications for induced pluripotent stem cells in in vitro modeling of neurological diseases, and engineered a blood-brain barrier model to investigate how apolipoprotein E contributes to the breakdown of the brain’s vasculature. She also is working to characterize the different functional states of microglia associated with AD pathology, such as amyloid plaques and tau tangles. Identifying how microglia transition to different states during AD progression could lead to therapies that target neuroinflammation and return microglia to their homeostatic state in AD patients.
Is it possible to treat Alzheimer’s with light and sound? Listen to Dr. Tsai’s TED talk about a promising new approach she’s pioneering, and how it can help treat amyloid beta plaques associated with Alzheimer’s disease.
Hear Dr. Tsai and her colleagues at the Aging Brain Initiative at MIT speak about their innovative, multidisciplinary approach to figure out the problem of the aging brain, memory disorders and how they can be prevented in this video.
To learn more about the Tsai Lab, click here.