Dibyadeep Datta
Yale University, CT·Neuroscience
Sporadic Alzheimer's disease (sAD), the common form that is not directly inherited, starts quietly in the brain decades before memory problems appear. Its well-known hallmarks, amyloid-β (Aβ) plaques and tangles of the protein tau, show up late.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Biology
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
Alzheimer's disease
neurodegeneration
tau
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2028
What they work on
- Define the spatial relationship between pT217Tau, an early blood and spinal fluid marker of Alzheimer's, endosome enlargement and APP/Aβ42 in postmortem human brains across Braak stages, using quantitative immunofluorescence in vulnerable and resistant cortical regions.
- Examine how pT217Tau, APP/Aβ42 and endosome abnormalities change with age in rhesus macaque cortex, using dual-label immuno-electron microscopy to image tau–endosome contacts at nanometer scale.
- Test whether boosting tau phosphorylation in human iPSC-derived neurons is enough to cause endosome defects and altered APP/Aβ42 trafficking, focusing on SORL1-deficient lines with impaired retromer recycling.
More about the research
This project looks for the very first cellular changes, when the disease might still be reversible. It focuses on three early signals. The first is a form of tau tagged with a phosphate at one spot, called pT217Tau, which appears in spinal fluid and blood years before symptoms. The second is swelling of endosomes, the cell's internal sorting compartments. The third is how amyloid precursor protein (APP) is processed into the toxic fragment Aβ42.
Why it matters
Alzheimer's disease affects millions of people, and current tools detect it only after much damage is done. By pinpointing where early tau, amyloid and endosome problems first meet inside neurons, this work could identify new targets for treatment at the earliest, possibly reversible stage. It could also strengthen early diagnosis built on markers such as pT217Tau.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Gregory Petsko
Columbia University, NY·Biochemistry
Measure how disease-linked SORL1 mutations affect pairing of SORL1 proteins, binding to the retromer sorting complex and binding to APP, the amyloid precursor protein, using biochemical assays.
Maciej Stawikowski
Florida Atlantic University, FL·Chemistry
Design and synthesize environment-sensitive fluorescent cholesterol probes (CNDs) built on a 1,8-naphthalimide dye, using computational chemistry to tune their properties for different imaging uses.
Merina Varghese
University of Rhode Island, RI·Neuroscience
Map spatial changes in small molecules and proteins in the vulnerable prefrontal cortex and the resilient primary visual cortex across Alzheimer's stages, using mass spectrometry imaging with segmentation analysis on postmortem brain sections.
The school
Yale University: 73 labs on PI Pages, $1.5B a year on research, 438 research doctorates a year.
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