Neurodegenerative disease

In Parkinson’s disease, clumps of sticky proteins trigger inflammation in the brain, leading to neuronal death. Whitehead Institute’s Founding Member Rudolf Jaenisch and colleagues have now found that a mutation causing these proteins to misfold and become sticky can also turn the brain’s immune cells from friends to foes, possibly accelerating the progression of the disease.

Whitehead Institute Founding Member Rudolf Jaenisch and colleagues developed an approach to isolate and analyze phagosomes, which are an important organelle in microglia, a type of immune cell found in the brain. Microglia are involved in brain development, as well as neurodegeneration, brain cancer, and more so understanding their biology has many potential implications.

Whitehead Institute Member Jonathan Weissman and collaborators have developed a gene-silencing tool that shows promise as a therapy against fatal prion diseases. The tool, a streamlined epigenetic editor, paves the way for a new class of genetic approaches to treat certain diseases.

Rare neurodegenerative diseases have been linked to excessive repeats in the DNA sequence. Whitehead Institute Member Ankur Jain and colleagues have uncovered a new mechanism that explains how an expanded CAG repeat — like the one involved in Huntington’s disease — can lead to the production of abnormal proteins, disrupting cell function.

The Institute's newest Whitehead Fellows are Valhalla Fellow Allison Hamilos and Aditya Raguram. Watch these videos to meet them and learn more about their work.

Once considered genomic “junk,” repetitive sequences in DNA are being discovered to have important roles in our biology. Whitehead Institute researchers are investigating different types of these repeated sequences, from repetitive DNA regions to excessive repeats within genes, in order to understand what roles they play in cells and how they contribute to health and disease.

Clumps of abnormal RNA are known to build up in some neurological disorders including Huntington’s disease and ALS. New research from Whitehead Institute Member Ankur Jain shows that these clumps can form outside of the cell’s nucleus, becoming more toxic to cells.

Marine Krzisch is a postdoc in Whitehead Institute Member Rudolf Jaenisch’s lab who works on making better models with which to study neurological diseases. We sat down with Marine to learn more about her and her experiences in and out of the lab.

Xin Tang is a postdoc in Whitehead Institute Member Rudolf Jaenisch’s lab investigating brain disease and developing approaches to discover new therapies. We sat down with Tang to learn more about him and his experiences in and out of the lab.

Benjamin Sabari was a postdoc in Whitehead Institute Member Richard (Rick) Young’s lab investigating how the molecules involved in gene regulation organize into large collective assemblies called condensates. As of January 2020, Sabari is running his own lab at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. We sat down with Sabari to learn more about him and his experiences in and out of the lab.