Faculty
Ayala School’s Impact Feature: On the Forefront of the Huntington’s Fight “Many describe the symptoms of Huntington’s disease as having Lou Gehrigs disease, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s – simultaneously.” – Huntington’s Disease Society of America The fatal genetic disorder Huntington’s, which often first appears in mid-life, breaks down nerve cells in the brain, eroding physical and mental capacities over time. With no current cure, Leslie M. Thompson (Ph.D. ’89, Biological Sciences), Chancellor’s Fellow and Professor of Neurobiology and Behavior and Psychiatry and Human Behavior, has devoted two decades searching for one. Professor Thompson’s lab is at the forefront of using stem cells to better understand the disease and design new treatments. Centering on Huntington’s molecular and cellular basis, her lab takes a multidisciplinary approach that has allowed Professor Thompson to collaborate with many faculty at UC Irvine and other institutions. Her interest in the issue was sparked during graduate school at UCI, where she obtained her doctorate in biological sciences. “I took a course on human genetics and I was struck by the potential and excitement of this approach to understanding diseases,” said Professor Thompson, who majored in biology at UC San Diego and earned a master’s degree in molecular biology from UC Santa Barbara.
She conducted her postdoctoral training under Professor John J. Wasmuth at UCI, studying the molecular genetics of Huntington’s. “Then I started meeting families and going to Venezuela to work with a large Huntington’s disease population there,” she said. “As I learned more and saw its devastation, I became committed to trying to understand the disease and find ways to intervene.” Professor Thompson, the founding co-editor of the Journal of Huntington’s Disease, was recently awarded a grant from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine to further her work toward using human-derived stem cells in clinical trials. She is the principal investigator of UCI-based NeuroLINCS. Funded by the federal government, NeuroLINCS is one of six national centers creating a database of human cellular responses and imaging to speed efforts to develop new therapies for diseases. The specific mission of NeuroLINCS is to better understand brain cell functioning and help develop drugs for neurological disorders.
About 30,000 Americans currently have Huntington’s symptoms and over 200,000 more are at risk of inheriting the disease, according to the Huntington’s Disease Society of America.
UCI BioSci Ayala School 2017 Dean’s Report
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