John Steele is a graduate student in Samuel Gandy's lab at Mount Sinai Medical Center. He works on Alzheimer's Disease and was part of a team of Mount Sinai researchers who found that the antihistamine drug dimebolin (Dimebon), an experimental therapy that had been reported to improve cognitive function in patients with Alzheimer’s disease, may actually contribute to increased levels of beta amyloid in the brain, a protein that can contribute to neuron deterioration. These results are surprising given recent studies which had suggested that dimebolin could help enhance cognitive function.

 

Heather McKellar received her B.A. from Boston University in 2003 after completing senior thesis work on the involvement of the amygdala in pseudopregnancy with Dr. Mary Erskine.  She then looked at the role of mast cells in brain function while working as a technician in the lab of Dr. Rae Silver at Columbia University.  She is now working on the Disc1 project investigating the impact of the schizophrenia-relevant mutation on hippocampal structure and function.