The UK Dementia Research Institute welcomes Dr Michael Sasner (The Jackson Laboratory, Bar Harbor, ME, USA) for a special webinar to discuss recent advances in efforts to generate translationally-relevant mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease.
In the MODEL-AD program, Dr Sasner’s focus is on creating and characterizing improved models of late-onset Alzheimer’s disease to be used in the development of novel therapeutics. This includes generation of new mouse models expressing genetic risk factors previously identified in human disease and phenotyping of clinically relevant traits to be used in preclinical testing.
They are also using a genetic knock-in approach to generate more relevant models of familial (early-onset) AD, and to study genetic risk associated with key aging and disease-associated variants at the APOE and klotho loci. As partners in a consortium focused on the role of neuroinflammation in neurodegenerative diseases, they create unique animal models useful for the study of disease etiology (e.g., fluorescent reporters for specific microglia or astrocyte cell states).
Continually striving to develop and implement improved experimental methods by partnering with companies to validate and adopt new technologies. In all projects, their main goal is to make novel resources, included animal models, information, and methods, widely available for both academic and biomedical research. Towards this goal, Dr Michael Sasner is a co-Director of an annual hands-on workshop Principles and Techniques for Improving Preclinical Translation in Alzheimer’s Disease.
Dementia Researcher
Dr Yvonne Couch
