Hilal A Lashuel, PhD

Dr. Hilal A. Lashuel received his B.Sc. degree in chemistry from the City University of New York in 1994 and completed his doctoral studies at Texas A&M University and the Scripps Research Institute in 1999. After obtaining his doctoral degree, he became a research fellow at the Picower Institute for Medical Research in Long Island New York where he focused on developing amyloid-based therapeutic strategies for Alzheimer's disease. In 2001, he moved to Harvard Medical School and the Brigham and Women's Hospital as a research fellow in the Center for Neurologic Diseases. In 2001 he received a sabbatical fellowship from Harvard Center for Neurodegeneration and Repair and promoted to an instructor in neurology at Harvard Medical School. During his tenure (2001-2004) at Harvard Medical School his work focused on understanding the mechanisms of protein misfolding and fibrillogenesis and the role of these processes in the pathogenesis of Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease. In 2005 Dr. Lashuel moved Switzerland to join the Brain Mind Institute at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne as a tenure-track assistant professor in neurosciences. Currently, Dr. Lashuel is the director of the laboratory of molecular neurobiology and Neuroproteomics (http://nmnf.epfl.ch) and the EPFL proteomic platform (http://pcf.epfl.ch).

Research efforts in the Lashuel's laboratory cover the following topics: (1) Elucidating the structural basis of amyloid-associated toxicity in neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and Huntington's disease; (2) Understanding the role of quaternary structure in protein function and disease; (3) developing novel chemical and physical approaches and tools to monitor and control protein misfolding and protein aggregation in vitro and in vivo; (4) developing cellular models of neurodegeneration in Parkinson's disease; (5) developing novel therapeutic strategies based on modulating protein aggregation and clearance. (6) Exploiting amyloid fibril formation for constructing polypeptide materials with potential applications in biotechnology and medicine. Research in the Lashuel lab is funded by several international funding agencies and foundations, including the Swiss National Science Foundation, European FP7 program, Strauss Foundation, Michael J Fox Foundation and is supported by collaborations with several biotech companies.

Dr. Lashuel's research has resulted in the characterization of novel quaternary structure intermediates on the amyloid pathway, identification of potential therapeutic targets, and new hypotheses concerning the mechanisms of pathogenesis in Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and related disorders. Dr. Lashuel scientific contribution to this field includes i) 56 publications in major peer reviewed journals including Nature, Cell, Genes & Development, PNAS, JBC, Biochemistry; ii) three patents on novel strategies for preventing protein aggregation; iii) more than 95 invited lectures since 2002. In addition, Dr. Lashuel has chaired and co-organized several international conferences and serves as an academic editor for PLoS ONE, an associate editor for frontiers of molecular neuroscience and ad hoc reviewer for several international scientific journals and funding agencies.

For a complete list of publications, see

http://nmnf.epfl.ch/page9106.html