Pierre De Rossi, PhD

Pierre De Rossi is a postdoctoral research scholar in the Department of Neurobiology at the University of Chicago. During his PhD work at the Lyon Neuroscience Center (France), he worked on the regulation of postnatal synaptogenesis and synaptic remodeling associated with learning and memory. His study highlighted a role for vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) in N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor trafficking via the activation of long-term potentiation signaling pathways at the post-synaptic sites (De Rossi et al, 2016). He also started to study the pathological aspects of the synapse called the limbic encephalitis (Mikasova et al, 2012). Specifically, he investigated the effects of autoantibodies against NMDA receptor in the context of synaptic plasticity and learning and memory, and autoantibodies mGluR1, in the context of synaptic remodeling and cerebellar ataxia. Pierre joined Prof. Gopal Thinakaran’s lab in 2014 as a post-doctoral fellow to work on AD. He became interested in the role of BIN1 in AD. BIN1 has been identified as the second most significant late-onset AD risk factor gene. Pierre has published two papers describing BIN1 physiological expression in the brain and its relation with tau tangles in the brains of patient with AD. In the Thinakaran lab, Pierre is now utilizing in vitro and in vivo models to understand BIN1’s function in the nervous system in health and disease.