Research in our laboratory is focused primarily on two areas: the cell biological basis of Alzheimer's disease (AD), and the functions and regulation of proteins known as IQGAPs. 

The histopathological hallmark of Alzheimer's disease is the presence in brain of extracellular deposits containing ß-amyloid peptide fibrils plus intraneuronal neurofibrillary tangles, which are filaments composed of the protein, tau. We have found that tau expression makes microtubules hypersensitive to small ß-amyloid olgiomers, and suspect that tau-dependent, ß-amyloid-induced microtubule disassembly is a seminal event in AD pathogenesis at the cellular level.The goals of our work on AD are to decipher the metabolic link that connects ß-amyloid and tau to damage neurons, and to apply our findings to the development of novel therapeutic and diagnostic tools for AD.