The Center for Autism and Neurodevelopment presents:
Morgan Sheng, MBBS, PhD, FRS
Vice President, Neuroscience, Genentech
Synapse elimination occurs normally during brain development. Aberrant synapse loss is also a feature of neurodegenerative diseases and some neurodevelopmental disorders. Via an unbiased proteomic approach, we studied the changes in protein composition of synapses that occur early in disease progression in a model of tauopathy and Alzheimer’s disease. From this analysis, we conclude that multiple pathways (actin cytoskeleton, complement) contribute to pathological synapse loss.
Morgan Sheng, MBBS, PhD, FRS, is Vice-President, Neuroscience, and responsible for directing neuroscience research and drug discovery efforts at Genentech. Prior to joining Genentech in 2008, Dr. Sheng was the Menicon Professor of Neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), as well as Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and a professor in MIT's Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Department of Biology. Dr. Sheng received a bachelor of arts in physiology from Oxford University (UK), and obtained his medical degree and training in internal medicine at London University (UK). He also holds a PhD in molecular genetics from Harvard University. Following his postdoctoral work in neuroscience at the University of California, San Francisco, Dr. Sheng served on the faculty at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School before joining MIT.
Dr. Sheng has been elected Fellow of the Royal Society (UK), Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (UK), and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He serves/served on the editorial boards of several scientific journals, including Neuron, Journal of Neuroscience, Current Opinions in Neurobiology. A past recipient of the Fondation Ipsen Prize in Neuronal Plasticity, and the Young Investigator Award of the Society for Neuroscience, Dr. Sheng is author of more than 200 peer-reviewed publications focused on the molecular mechanisms of brain plasticity and neurodegenerative disorders.