Erin Norris
Rockefeller University, NY·Neuroscience
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is driven partly by beta-amyloid (Aβ), a sticky protein fragment that builds up in the brain. Blood vessels, blood clotting and inflammation also play a role in the disease.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Biochemistry
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
Alzheimer's disease
neurodegeneration
beta-amyloid
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Jul 2028
What they work on
- Develop antibodies that recognize cleaved high molecular weight kininogen, a blood protein cut during contact system activation, as a blood test to identify Alzheimer's patients whose disease involves this pathway.
- Test whether antibodies that block kininogen cleavage, and thus the release of the inflammatory molecule bradykinin, can reduce the vascular and inflammatory pathology of Alzheimer's disease.
- Determine how complexes of beta-amyloid and the clotting protein fibrinogen damage neurons independently of clotting, using hippocampal slice cultures, purified proteins, and mouse and human samples.
- Use mutant and longer beta-amyloid variants that bind fibrinogen more strongly to uncover the molecular mechanisms that make Aβ/fibrinogen complexes toxic to the brain.
More about the research
The links between Aβ and the blood system are not well understood. This research examines how Aβ disrupts blood proteins, and how that disruption could be detected or blocked. One project develops antibodies against a clotting-related protein. The other studies how Aβ binds the clotting protein fibrinogen.
Why it matters
Alzheimer's disease has no treatment that slows or prevents it. Antibodies that measure cleaved kininogen in blood could help identify patients whose disease involves the clotting and inflammation pathway, possibly before symptoms appear. Antibodies that block kininogen cleavage, or that target Aβ–fibrinogen interactions, could point to new therapies that reduce inflammation and abnormal clotting.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Rafal Pawlinski
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC·Medicine & Clinical Research
Identify the disease-specific triggers that activate Factor XII, a protein that starts blood clotting, in sickle cell disease, using blood samples from patients and a mouse model of the disease.
Wenzhang Wang
Case Western Reserve University, OH·Neuroscience
Determine whether and how abnormally increased contacts between mitochondria and the endolysosomal system cause mitochondrial defects in Alzheimer's disease neurons, using in vivo and in vitro disease models.
Amal Khalil Kaddoumi
Augusta University, GA·Pharmacology
Compare how well racemic etodolac and its R- and S-forms improve a cell-based blood-brain barrier model with amyloid-β pathology, measuring barrier permeability, Aβ clearance and RNA expression changes across doses.
The school
Rockefeller University: 6 labs on PI Pages, $305M a year on research, 38 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
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