Heng Du, PhD

After I finished my residency training in the program of neurodegenerative disorders, I joined Dr. Shirley Shidu Yan's lab at Columbia University Medical Center as a postdoctoral research fellow to start my research on mitochondria in Alzheimer's disease (AD). My training at Columbia University offered me the opportunity to interact with world-known neuroscientists and to perform intensive study to understand the molecular mechanisms of this neurodegenerative disorder. I started my own lab at the University of Texas at Dallas in 2013 and continued my exploration into mitochondrial pathways of synaptic injury and the development of mitochondria-targeted therapy for the treatment of AD. Our previous studies result in publications in Nature Medicine, Nature Communications, PNAS, Science Translational Medicine and many others. The overarching goal of our research is to elucidate the etiopathogenesis of familial and sporadic AD with strong emphasis on the network of systemic dysmetabolism, mitochondrial dysfunction, neuroinflammation and synaptic failure.