Spring 2010: Biology Dept. features talk by Dr. Cynthia McMurray of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory on Huntington's Disease: Oxidation, Repair and Toxicity
by Kathleen McCoy |
Friday, March 26, 3:30-4:45 p.m.
CPISB, Room 120
The Biology Department is pleased to have as our speaker Dr. Cynthia McMurray, staff scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Dr. McMurray is a professor of pharmacology and biochemistry and molecular biology at the Mayo Clinic. She will present Huntington's Disease: Oxidation, and repair and toxicity.
Dr. McMurray's research interests are the cause and effects of DNA instability in human disease.
More than 10 neurodegenerative diseases and cancer are associated with DNA instability. Her laboratory investigates:
- how DNA is unstabley transmitted
- why expanded proteins cause disease
- discovery of novel disease genes that are expanded
The ultimate goal of the research is to develop pharmacological and molecular approaches for cures. Special focus is placed on diseases that demonstrate neurodegenerative/neuropsychiatric phenotype and/or cancer predisposition including Huntington's Disease, Spinocerebellar Ataxias, schizophrenia, and Ataxia Telangiectasia.
Her group is working to understand what signaling mechanisms in neurons result in neuronal death. They aim to block these pathways for prevention of neurodegeneration and harness these pathways for killing cancer cells.
"Spring 2010: Biology Dept. features talk by Dr. Cynthia McMurray of the Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory on Huntington's Disease: Oxidation, Repair and Toxicity" is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.