Dr. Lucia Notterpek is the
winner of the 2004 Jordi-Folch-Pi Memorial Award. The main goal of Dr.
Notterpek's research is to understand how misexpression of the peripheral myelin
protein 22 (PMP22) gene leads to hereditary demyelinating peripheral neuropathies.
Recently, Dr. Notterpek's laboratory has discovered that disease-linked forms
of PMP22 have extended half-lives and accumulate in perinuclear cytosolic aggregates.
Under permissive conditions, these aggregates can be cleared from the cell by
an autophagy-assisted mechanism. These findings provide insight into potential
therapeutic approaches for the treatment of this debilitating condition. A second
focus of Dr. Notterpek's research is to elucidate the role of PMP22 at intercellular
junctions of non-neural cells, as well as in Schwann cell membranes. Dr. Notterpek
received a B.A. in Anatomy-Physiology from the University of California at Berkeley.
She obtained her Ph.D. in Neuroscience at the University of California, Los
Angeles working with her advisor Dr. Leonard H. Rome. Her postdoctoral training
was under the guidance of Dr. Eric Shooter at Stanford University. Currently,
Dr. Notterpek is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Neuroscience at
the McKnight Brain Institute of the University of Florida. Her research efforts
are being supported by the NIH-NINDS and the National Muscular Dystrophy Association.