Addressing Health Equity in Age-related Disorders (AHEAD) Cluster

Professor and Director, Herbert and Jacqueline Krieger Klein Alzheimer’s Research Center, Neurology, RWJMS, RBHS

Michal Schnaider Beeri, a global leader in Alzheimer’s disease clinical research and director of the Herbert and Jacqueline Krieger Klein Alzheimer’s and Dementia Clinical Research and Treatment Center, as its Endowed Chair in Neurodegenerative Research.

Beeri, who came to Rutgers from Mount Sinai School of Medicine where she was a professor in psychiatry, specializing in geriatric psychology, cognitive impairment and diabetes as a risk factor for neurodegeneration. The recipient of numerous awards from the National Institutes of Health, Beeri has published more than 190 peer-reviewed articles in leading journals and serves on major health and medical editorial boards. She is credited for helping to establish The Joseph Sagol Neuroscience Center at Sheba Medical Center in Israel, which is acclaimed for Alzheimer’s and dementia research. Through her trailblazing research, Beeri has been praised for trying to help prevent Alzheimer’s disease and dementia in the general population.

A professor at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School Department of Neurology and a Core Member of the Brain Health Institute, Beeri has spent much of her career mentoring and training both students and post-doctoral scientists.  To better understand the causes of Alzheimer’s and dementia and help develop novel therapeutics for its treatment, Beeri is creating cohorts for clinical trials on Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. The knowledge gained from work done at the new center, which opened this fall, will offer hope for both patients and families whose lives have been unequivocally altered by the devastating effects of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

Vice Chancellor of Dissemination and Implementation Science, Rutgers Health, Senior Associate Dean for Population Health Research, and Professor, Vice Chair of Research, and Henry Rutgers Chair of Family Medicine and Community Health, RWJMS, RBHS

Dr. Shawna Hudson is Vice Chancellor for Dissemination and Implementation Science for Rutgers Health and Senior Associate Dean for Population Health Research at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. She is also founding director of the school’s Center Advancing Research and Evaluation for Patient-Centered Care (CARE-PC). Dr. Hudson is a full research member of the Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey in the Cancer Prevention and Control Program where she previously served as the Director of Community Research and Acting Director of Community Outreach. She has a secondary faculty appointment in the Rutgers School of Public Health in the Department of Health Behavior, Society and Policy. Dr. Hudson currently serves as Director for the Community Engagement Core of the NJ Alliance for Clinical and Translational Science (NJ ACTS) – a Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) consortium of Rutgers University, Princeton University and the New Jersey Institute of Technology. She led its $5 million NIH-funded Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics for Underserved Populations initiative to improve outreach and access to COVID-19 testing within New Jersey vulnerable and underserved communities.

Senior Associate Dean, Professor and Chair, Pharmacology, Physiology and Neuroscience, NJMS, RBHS

Major research interests encompass four distinct areas: 1) studies of the basic mechanisms, regulation and subcellular organization of the IP3-dependent calcium signaling system; 2) mechanisms and function of metabolic sensing and nutrient-derived signals; 3) signaling and drug development targeting blood stage malaria parasites; 4) investigations of excitation-contraction coupling in cardiac muscle cells. In the context of IP3-dependent signaling, my laboratory has played a leading role in the developing recognition of the importance of subcellular organization in calcium signaling. We have extended these studies to investigations of proliferative signaling and the regulation of synchronized development of intraerythrocytic malaria parasites. Current work focuses on the development of therapeutic approaches based

on interfering with the latter signals. We are also investigating mechanisms underlying calcium oscillations and waves, the regulation of IP3-receptor function, and the role of spatially organized calcium signals in the subcellular targeting and tissue integration of calcium-regulated processes. In addition, we study other intracellular calcium release channels, including a ryanodine receptor variant that appears to play an important role in nonexcitable cells. Our studies of the intracellular organization of calcium signaling also examine how cytosolic calcium signals are transmitted to the mitochondrial matrix. This mitochondrial signaling pathway plays a key role in coordinating energy metabolism with cell function. In addition, our studies of mitochondrial function investigate the mechanism and targets of oxidative stress. While our work on calcium signaling is relevant to many physiologic processes, a particular focus of the laboratory is on the role of calcium in the endocrine regulation of metabolism in the brain, liver and peripheral tissues. In addition to the well-known endocrine pathways of metabolic regulation, it is becoming increasingly clear that nutrients and metabolites can also function as signaling molecules in their own right. We refer to these processes as metabolic sensing. We are investigating the signal transduction pathways activated by metabolites in specific neurons of the hypothalamus, as well as liver, muscle and

other tissues. We are also interested in metabolic sensing in cardiac muscle. However, most of our research efforts in the heart focus on cardiomyocyte excitation contraction coupling and how this is modified in response to disease states, including alcoholic cardiomyopathy and ischemic injury. The broad range of research emphasis in my laboratory are linked by the common role of calcium as an intracellular signal and by the similar technical approaches utilized, which range from molecular biology to high-speed digital imaging.