People
The Team
An interdisciplinary team united by a commitment to understanding aging and developing therapies for neurodegenerative disease.
Principal Investigator
Pamela Maher, PhD
Research Professor
Dr. Pamela Maher is a Research Professor in the Cellular Neurobiology Laboratory at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. Her laboratory focuses on understanding the molecular mechanisms that connect aging to neurodegenerative diseases, with a particular emphasis on Alzheimer's disease. Dr. Maher and her team were among the first to describe oxytosis, a non-apoptotic cell death pathway now understood to overlap with ferroptosis, and have demonstrated its relevance to brain aging and neurodegeneration. The lab uses natural products as the basis for drug discovery, applying phenotypic screening assays grounded in aging biology to identify compounds that target multiple pathways simultaneously. Two drug candidates developed by the lab, CMS121 and J147, are currently in human clinical trials for Alzheimer's disease.
Education
- ◆BSc, Biochemistry, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
- ◆PhD, Biochemistry, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada
- ◆Postdoctoral Fellow, Cell Biology, University of California, San Diego
Honors & Awards
- ◆Edward N. and Della L. Thome Memorial Foundation Award in Alzheimer's Disease Drug Discovery (2015)
- ◆Michael J. Fox Foundation Award for Novel Approaches to Drug Discovery for Parkinson's Disease (2007)
- ◆NIH Postdoctoral Fellowship (1982)
- ◆Anna Fuller Postdoctoral Fellowship (1980)
- ◆Killam Predoctoral Fellowship (1979)
Careers
Open Positions
There are no open positions in the lab at this time.
If you hold your own funding and are interested in contributing to our research on oxytosis, ferroptosis, and Alzheimer's disease drug discovery, we would still like to hear from you. Please write directly to Dr. Pamela Maher with a short note about your background and research interests.
Email pmaher@salk.edu →