Norman and Susan Fixel Chair in Parkinson’s Disease
Professor of Neuroscience and Neurology
Co-Director, Center for Translational Research in Neurodegenerative Disease, Parkinson's Foundation Research Center of Excellence, College of Medicine, University of Florida
Maria de Lourdes (Malú) was born in El Paso, Texas. She obtained her B.S/M.S in Biological Sciences from Stanford University and her Ph.D. in Physiology from The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. In 2001, she joined a private biotech as Chemical Genetics Group Leader at Xencor, Inc. She co-invented novel soluble TNF inhibitors which she subsequently used to investigate the role of neuroinflammation in neurodegenerative disease and which have now advanced to clinical trials in Alzheimer’s disease and COVID19 for cytokine storm. Dr. Tansey used these TNF inhibitors in several models of rodent and monkey models of parkinsonism and demonstrated that even when administered late, they can prevent loss of dopaminergic neurons and motor deficits. She is currently working with INmune Bio to advance these biologics into clinical trials in people with Parkinson’s in late 2021. After becoming a tenured Associate Professor of Physiology at UTSMC in 2008, Dr. Tansey was recruited to Emory University in Atlanta, GA by the Department of Physiology where she became a member of the Center for Neurodegenerative Disease. In 2018, she catalyzed multiple initiatives to expand and coalesce neuroinflammation efforts across the medical school and helped establish the Center for Neurodysfunction and Inflammation (CNI). In 2019, she became the Director of the Center for Translational Research in Neurodegenerative Disease (CTRND) and the first endowed Norman and Susan Fixel Chair in Neuroscience and Neurology at the University of Florida. She has expanded her research efforts to investigate the role of the gut-brain axis and the gut microbiome in Parkinson’s pathogenesis and progression. She and others have proposed that gut inflammation may contribute to aggregation of alpha synuclein and its potential spread from peripheral organs towards the brain via the vagus (see Houser et al., 2017) and more recently that the LRRK2 gene, which is the largest genetic cause of familial Parkinson’s and also linked to Crohn’s disease, an autoimmune form of an inflammatory bowel disorder, may be the missing link between the association between Parkinson’s and IBD (see Herrick and Tansey, 2021). In more recent studies with human subjects, Dr. Tansey and colleagues reported that Parkinson’s patients display evidence of inflammation in their gut and stool relative to their spousal controls (Houser et al 2018) and that importantly the gut levels of inflammation were not reflected in the blood (Aho, Houser et al, 2021). Interestingly, they also found that Parkinson’s patients with reduced levels of microbial-derived metabolites called short-chain fatty acids (SFCAs), which have been shown to have protective effects on gut barrier integrity, had higher levels of gut inflammation and displayed clinical symptoms earlier in life whereas those with higher levels of SCFAs were older when symptoms appeared, suggesting that they might have been protected from disease onset. The long-term objective of Dr. Tansey’s research is to understand how we can modify our environment and lifestyle choices to minimize our lifetime risk for development of age-related neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease.
Steps to claim CME credits for BWH Neurology Grand Rounds 2020-2021:
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Text this code “YOYREF” to 1-857-214-2277.
- A link will be sent to your email. Click on the link and complete the evaluation. After you complete the evaluation, your CME will be recorded. You will then be able to download a PDF of your certificate.
For more information about BWH Neurology Grand Rounds 2020-2021, click
If you have any questions about the CME credit, please contact Partners Office of Continuing Professional Development at PartnersCPD@partners.org.
Upcoming Schedule:
5/5/21 - CPC
5/12/21 - Howard Weiner, Tyler Lecture, Longwood Neurology Grand Rounds
5/26/21 - Dimitri Krainc
6/2/21 - Michael Heneka
6/9/21 - Combined Longwood GR
6/16/21 - Neurodegenerative Case Conference
6/23/21 - Dean Brashear
6/30/21 - Guoping Feng
