Virginie Buggia-Prevot, PhD

Virginie Buggia-Prévot is a postdoctoral research scholar in the Department of Neurobiology at the University of Chicago. She complete her doctoral studies on cell and molecular biology at the University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis (France), where she found that the amyloid-beta peptide feeds its own production when its reaches abnormal concentrations, by increasing the transcription of BACE1, the enzyme responsible for amyloid peptide generation. She then joined Prof. Gopal Thinakaran’s team five years ago to pursue her work on Alzheimer’s disease, by studying the mechanism involved in the regulation of BACE1 transport in neurons by live-cell imaging. Her recent work identified three new regulators of BACE1 trafficking, which also affect amyloid production in neurons. The discovery of such regulators could lead to novel targets and strategies for Alzheimer’s therapeutics.