Vik to speak at Cambridge Healthtech Institute’s inaugural iPS Cell Technology in Drug Discovery and Development in June 2016.

Many progressive neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s, and Parkinson’s disease, are characterized by abnormal clumps of proteins that clog up the cell and disrupt normal cellular functions. But it’s difficult to study these complex disease processes directly in the brain—so NIH-funded researchers, led by a team at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, Cambridge, MA, have turned to yeast for help.

A team of scientists at the Cambridge-based Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research have identified a compound that can reverse some of the toxicity that occurs in brain cells created from Parkinson’s disease patients’ stem cells.

When neurologist Dr. Vikram Khurana tells his patients that he’s doing all he can to help them, he’s not exaggerating—after treating patients for Parkinson’s disease in the clinic, he works to find a cure for Parkinson’s in the lab. Part clinician, part researcher, Khurana is both an attending neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and a scientist at Whitehead Institute. His research focuses on discovering new therapeutics capable of reversing the neurodegeneration that is a hallmark of Parkinson’s.