[HT-05] More than just taking out the garbage: Expanding landscape of autophagy and lysosome function in neurological diseases

[HT-05-2] Lysosomal dysfunction in Parkinson's disease and what postmortem brains tell us

Glenda M. Halliday (Brain and Mind Centre and Faculty of Medicine and Health Central Clinical School, University of Sydney)

Autophagy sequesters cytoplasmic material and organelles to lysosomes for degradation. The magnitude of autophagy depends on starvation, oxidative stress, or other noxious conditions, which thereby exerts quality control function that contributes to neurodegeneration and aging. The lysosome was once thought of as a waste bag, a dead-end destination where cellular debris was sent for disposal. However, recent studies have challenged this simple view and found that Lysosomes are not just a sack of digestive enzymes, but rather a signaling/sorting hub related to all of the materials used in the cell. In this symposium, we will invite four speakers with known expertise to share the recently discovered properties of the autophagy-lysosome system in neurological conditions and offer helpful hints on how to develop therapeutic strategies to combat these devastating diseases.

Professor Halliday is a NHMRC full-time research fellow and University Professor of Neuroscience at the Brain and Mind Centre, University of Sydney, and recognised as an international leader in neurodegenerative diseases. She leads a research program of over 100 researchers tackling non-Alzheimer's neurodegenerative diseases that stems from her work on Parkinson’s disease, and frontotemporal and motor neurodegenerative syndromes. She has made several seminal discoveries relevant to understanding Lewy body diseases, including describing their progression, their regional concentration of pathology associated with core clinical features, and contributing to diagnostic criteria for prodromal and clinical Parkinson’s disease, Parkinson’s disease dementia and dementia with Lewy bodies. This research has directly influenced clinical practice by providing the evidence base for understanding the pathologies underlying neurodegenerative diseases, clarifying the trajectory of these diseases over time and exploring any potential variability. She was the first director of the Sydney Brain Bank which continues to collect biospecimens from longitudinally-followed populations with different neurodegenerative diseases, tissue which has revealed details of cellular changes occurring in different circumstances (at macro, micro and biochemical levels), allowed disease gene discovery, and informed disease modeling for therapeutic development and delivery.