Dr. Brian Lananna

Seminar Title: “Highlights from “The degenerating star clock”: Astrocytes, Alzheimer’s disease, and the circadian clock”

Biography:

Dr. Brian Lananna received his B.A. in Psychology from Dartmouth College before joining the Division of Biological and Biomedical Sciences at Washington University as a Neuroscience graduate student in 2014. At Washington University, Dr. Lananna studied circadian clock regulation of astrocytic and microglial immune activation in the context of aging and Alzheimer’s disease in the lab of Dr. Erik Musiek in the department of Neurology. He was able to show that the circadian clock within astrocytes cell autonomously regulates astrocyte activation. Dr. Lananna has also demonstrated that a previously known Alzheimer’s biomarker, Chi3l1 (YKL-40) is regulated in astrocytes by the circadian clock. Further, he discovered that suppression of this protein can suppress beta-amyloid deposition in a mouse model and is associated with slower disease progression in humans with Alzheimer’s disease. Dr. Lananna defended his thesis, entitled “The degenerating star clock: Circadian clock regulation of astrogliosis and implications for Alzheimer’s disease” on April 10, 2019.

Outside of the lab, Dr. Lananna co-founded an elementary school neuroscience outreach program called Brain Discovery in 2015, which has now reached over 1200 students across more than 60 classrooms with 40 trained volunteers providing a total of more than 700 contact hours. Dr. Lananna also earned the Washington University Teaching Citation, mentored several graduate and undergraduates, and founded multiple journal clubs while at WashU.

Currently, Dr. Lananna is a postdoctoral research associate in the lab of Dr. Shin Imai where he studies the inter-tissue communication between adipose tissue and the brain in the context of aging. He also currently co-teaches a course on the Biology of Aging at WashU’s University College.