SAB Meet and Greet: Welcome Dr. Alberini
Barb Bailus, PhD
Dr. Cristina Alberini is an international addition to the FAST SAB, hailing from Italy. Dr. Alberini received her PhD from University of Genoa, Italy. She did her postdoctoral work at Columbia University focusing on learning and memory, using sea slugs as her model organism. Since sea slugs are not a common disease model organism, Dr. Alberini also studied memory formation in both mice and rats. Currently, Dr. Alberini’s lab is located at New York University, Center for Neural Science. Her fantastic work with IGF-2, showing that it was an essential peptide for learning and memory, drew FAST’s attention a few years ago. Her research indicated that administering IGF-2 could reverse autism-like phenotypes in mice, work which has since been repeated in Angelman syndrome mice, showing incredible symptomatic rescue of behaviors.
One of her favorite AS related memories is something I am sure many of our readers can relate to; meeting Paula Evans and Allyson Berent for the first time and feeling their energy, drive and enthusiasm for assembling the best team possible to cure AS. Dr. Alberini is most excited about the rapid progress being made toward a cure in the AS field and how this type of research may translate to other neurodevelopmental disorders.You can watch her at the 2018 FAST Summit here.
Click here for more information about our Scientific Advisory Board.