Peter Davies, PhD

Investigator

Head and Scientific Director, Litwin-Zucker Research Center for the Study of Alzheimer’s Disease and Memory Disorders

Main Area of Research

Searching for the reasons why a normal brain becomes a brain with Alzheimer's disease. 

A Story of Hope

Plaques and tangles may be the sign posts for Alzheimer’s disease, but Peter Davies, PhD, has discovered the road itself and it is a pathway that scientists in the field have missed after decades spent exploring the terrain of the diseased brain.

Dr. Davies runs a large Alzheimer’s research center and his scientists come at the disease from all sides. Dr. Davies' work may well change the way people think about Alzheimer’s. Today, most of the attention goes to the amyloid-filled plaques and tau-laden tangles. But Dr. Davies' work shows that Alzheimer’s disease may be a process of cell cycle division gone wild.

He has evidence that the switch that drives the cell cycle of neurons, which is a one-time event when the neuron is born, is somehow tripped and reactivated late in life. If Dr. Davies’ research is correct, unbridled and unexpected cell division is the initial event in the disease process.

Dr. Davies’ research shows that a drug that stops this process could prevent the brain cells from dying. The goal of the research lab is to develop and test new treatments for Alzheimer’s disease. They attack Alzheimer’s from all research angles, from genetics to biology to brain scans to clinical trials.

Funding Future Research

• Discover, develop and test effective treatments for Alzheimer’s disease.
  
  
• Establish a major Alzheimer’s center with both strong basic science and clinical components. (Moved from Albert Einstein College of Medicine to The Feinstein Institute in late 2006 to effectively execute this goal).
  
  
• Rapidly move basic science to people.