An MIT Alumni Association Publication

Video: New Alzheimer’s Research and Neurological Effects of Covid-19

  • Julie Fox
  • Slice of MIT

Filed Under

To date, 5.8 million Americans are living with Alzheimer’s disease, and it is a leading cause of death in the US. Learn about some of the approaches MIT researchers are using to understand Alzheimer’s, and how they are developing new therapeutic opportunities related to those insights, in this recording of a recent MIT Alumni Association Faculty Forum Online webinar.

One area for examination: the genes that are common among those with the disease. “Alzheimer’s disease could be a multifactorial disease where [the APOE4 gene] works with other factors to cause Alzheimer’s disease, or conversely, there could be resilience factors that we don’t know about that protect you from the disease-causing aspects of APOE4,” explains Joel Blanchard, postdoctoral researcher at the MIT Tsai Lab and recipient of the Glenn Foundation for Medical Research Postdoctoral Fellowship in Aging Research.

For an audience of MIT alumni, Blanchard and Li-Huei Tsai, Picower Professor of Neuroscience in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and director of the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, discussed their ongoing research on the brain and Alzheimer’s—as well as research they are doing on the neurological effects of Covid-19.

The talk was moderated by Pam Belluck, a health and science writer for the New York Times and a 2007–08 MIT Knight Science Journalism fellow.

Watch more archived Faculty Forum Online webinars, and register for upcoming MIT Alumni Association virtual programming.

Filed Under