Einar Sigurdsson, PhD

Professor, Department of Neuroscience and Physiology Department of Psychiatry at NYU Grossman School of Medicine

Speaker

Einar M. Sigurdsson, PhD, is a Professor at New York University Grossman School of Medicine in New York City, USA. His research focuses on pathogenesis, therapy and diagnosis for Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders. His doctoral work at Loyola University Chicago Medical Center provided one of the earliest evidence for amyloid-β induced tau pathology in a distant but anatomically connected brain region in a rat model, providing an important insight into Alzheimer's pathogenesis.

During his postdoctoral and junior faculty years at NYU, Einar and his collaborators introduced the use of modified non-toxic amyloid-β derivatives as potential immunotherapy for Alzheimer’s disease. Furthermore, they showed for the first time that active and passive immunization as well as chelators delayed the onset of prion disease in mice. On the diagnostic front, Dr. Sigurdsson and colleagues published the initial report on detection of amyloid plaques in living mouse brains by magnetic resonance imaging. Subsequently, his laboratory provided the first reports demonstrating efficacy of active and passive tau immunizations, which has led to several clinical trials.

Since then, his laboratory has provided important insights into various mechanistic aspects of tau immunotherapies, and is pursuing second generation antibody approaches targeting the tau protein and α-synuclein for therapy and diagnosis. He has published over hundred scientific articles and book chapters, edited three books on amyloid proteins, and is an inventor on several patents. His community service includes grant review panels of the NIH and various foundations, and editorial boards of scientific journals.