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Malu Tansey, PhD

Assiociate Professor
Emory University School of Medicine

Atlanta, Georgia

Malú G. Tansey obtained her BS/MS in Biological Sciences from Stanford University and her PhD in Cell Regulation from UT Southwestern Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences in Dallas. Her postdoctoral work in the laboratory of Dr. Eugene M. Johnson at Washington University in St. Louis included identification and molecular characterization of the GDNF family ligands neurturin, artemin and persephin. Her work, for which she received the 2000 James O'Leary Prize for Outstanding Neuroscience at Wash University, was the first demonstration that ligand-induced recruitment of a neurotrophic factor receptor (Ret) to low-density membrane microdomains for interaction with c-Src was functionally required for Ret-induced neuronal survival and differentiation.

Prior to joining the Department of Physiology at Emory University, Dr. Tansey was an Assistant Professor of Physiology at UT Southwestern from 2002 to 2009. Before that, Dr. Tansey worked in the biotech sector as head of the chemical genetics group at Xencor Inc., where she and her colleagues developed novel dominant negative TNF inhibitors which her lab is now using as biochemical tools to investigate the role of TNF signaling in neurodegenerative diseases.

The major research interests of her laboratory are identification of cellular and signaling targets used by TNF to induce neurotoxicity and degeneration of the nigrostriatal pathway and the mechanisms that regulate the vulnerability of dopaminergic neurons to inflammatory insults and oxidative stress. The ultimate goal of her work is to develop new strategies for preventing or delaying the onset of Parkinson's disease.