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After two fruitful years at NYU, it's time for a change to the sunnier and greener Gainesville! Alongside my dedicated research team, I'm thrilled to embrace the role of Assistant Dean in Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Excited to launch innovative initiatives!



Congrats to Liberty and co-authors on their publication Heat shock protein Grp78/BiP/HspA5 binds directly to TDP-43 and mitigates toxicity associated with disease pathology in Scientific Reports!

Using proximity-dependent biotin identification (BioID), the authors discovered several Hsp70 isoforms that associated with TPD-43. They then showed that HspA5 bound specifically with the RNA-binding domain of TDP-43. They also found that HspA5 was upregulated in a Drosophila model of ALS and in human prefrontal cortex neurons from ALS patient donors. Excitingly, they show that overexpression of HspA5 in the Drosophila ALS model rescued TDP-43-induced toxicity, suggesting that upregulation of HspA5 may have a compensatory role in ALS pathobiology.



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