Dr. Yuzhi Chen

Yuzhi Chen, PhD
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Yuzhi Chen, PhD

Assistant Professor

Dr. Chen received her PhD in Neuroscience and Behavior in 1997 from the University of Massachusetts Amherst Her postdoctoral training was mainly on the molecular biology of Alzheimer's disease at Harvard Medical School and McLean Hospital She was the Phyllis and Jerome Lyle Rappaport Mental Health Research Scholar in 2002 and the recipient of a pilot study grant from the American Health Assistance Foundation in 2002.She joined the Geriatrics Department in November of 2003 as the third recipient of the Inglewood Fellowship for Alzheimer's research.She is currently the secretary of the Society for Chinese Neuroscientists in North America and a member of the Society for Neuroscience.
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Dr. Chen has shown that APP-BP1 is necessary to drive cell cycle through the S-M checkpoints in dividing cells, and that overexpression of APP-BP1 in neurons induces neuronal apoptosis.She has further shown that APP-BP1 physically and functionally interacts with APP, and that the familial Alzheimer's disease (FAD) mutant of APP, V642I, induces apoptosis through the APP-BP1-mediated NEDD8 activation (neddylation) pathway.She is currently testing the hypothesis that APP-BP1 is constitutively activated in AD due to familial AD mutations and due to the consequential processing of APP.