Did You Know That Genetics Can Play a Significant Role in Neurodegenerative Diseases Such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and Frontotemporal Dementia?
At Kensington Senior Living, Our Promise is to love and care for your family as we do our own. And that includes you. To that end, we have built strong relationships with expert professionals who keep us current with the latest advances in care, management and treatment of conditions that affect seniors and their families.
That is why we are honored to partner with The Mary S. Easton Center for Alzheimer’s Disease Research and Care at UCLA to present this educational webinar on genetics, risk factors, and the signs of neurodegenerative brain diseases.
Some of these disorders, such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and Huntington’s disease are often caused by inheritance of gene mutations. During this roundtable discussion you will learn what genes predispose you and your family to brain disease. Our experts will discuss the risk factors and pro-active role you and your family can play when facing such genetic mutations; and you will learn about the groundbreaking discoveries and latest advances in research to combat these diseases.
Kacie Deters, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, The Mary S. Easton Center for Alzheimer’s Disease Research and Care at UCLA. Dr. Kacie Deters earned her Ph.D. in Medical Neuroscience at the Indiana University School of Medicine focusing on genetic and imaging characteristics of tauopathies, including Alzheimer’s disease. Kacie completed her first postdoc in 2021 at Stanford University with Dr. Elizabeth Mormino where she first began to explore ethnic and racial disparities existed in AD biomarkers. COVID hit, and Kacie decided to take a second postdoc, which she completed in 2022 at the University of California, San Diego in the Department of Neurosciences with Dr. Sarah Banks. While at UCSD, Kacie expanded her training to understand racial bias that exists in neuropsychological assessments. While at UCLA, Kacie’s lab will focus is on ethnic and racial disparities in predictors (genetic; neuroimaging; neuropsychological assessments; social/environmental factors) for cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias in older adults, primarily from the Black community.
Jessica Rexach, MD Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Neurology at UCLA and John Douglas French Alzheimer’s Foundation Endowed Chair. Dr. Jessica Rexach completed the undergraduate at Cornell, the MSTP physician scientist training program at UCLA and Caltech, medical residency at Cedars Sinai and the WLAVA, and a neurology residency and neurogenetics R25 fellowship at UCLA. Jessica completed her postdoctoral fellowship in Neurogenetics with Professor Daniel Geschwind at UCLA; and her PhD on intracellular glycosylation in neuronal signaling at Caltech with Professor Linda Hsieh-Wilson. Her lab combines multiomic, single-cell and genomics methods with experimental disease modeling to study neuronal-glial and neuroimmune mechanisms in dementia with the goal of identifying effective therapeutics.