Alberto Serrano-Pozo
Alberto Serrano-Pozo earned the Toffler Scholar Award at Harvard Medical School
Biography
Alberto Serrano-Pozo grew up in Málaga, Spain, with his parents and three siblings. From a very young age, Dr. Serrano-Pozo was motivated to study hard. His father always taught him that no matter what he chose to do, he should always try do it right, and this attitude stayed with him throughout his education.
Alberto became interested in research already in high school, when he learned about the series of efforts that led to the discovery of the DNA double helix. He remembers vividly how that biology class ignited his scientific curiosity. He became an avid reader around that time, and fondly remembers trading book recommendations with his group of friends. After graduation, Dr. Serrano-Pozo attended medical school and earned his MD from the University of Málaga School of Medicine in 2001. During the course of his medical education, he decided to become a clinician-scientist, because he felt both connected to the patients and curious about the mechanisms of their diseases.
After graduation from medical school, Dr. Serrano-Pozo moved just a few hours away, to Seville, for his first residency in neurology at University Hospital Virgen del Rocío. It was the right move, he jokes, because it was in Seville where he met his wife, who was doing her residency in the same hospital. It is during his residency training in Spain that he decided to focus his career on Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. He pursued a two-year research and behavioral neurology fellowship at the same institution while his wife completed her residency, and they moved together to the United States in 2008 to get more research training.
Dr. Serrano-Pozo joined Dr. Bradley Hyman’s lab at Massachusetts General Hospital as a research fellow, where he investigated the
![[Harvard]Clinical-pathological correlations of dementia](https://tofflertrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/alberto-serrano-pozo@3x.png "Alberto Serrano-Pozo")
clinic-pathological correlations of Alzheimer’s dementia. His publications during this period led him to receive his PhD at the University of Seville in 2013. They then decided to pursue a clinician-scientist career in the United States and completed their neurology residency training at the University of Iowa in 2017, where Dr. Serrano-Pozo was Chief Resident.
Currently, Dr. Serrano-Pozo is an Assistant Professor of Neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Harvard Medical School. He is a board-certified neurologist and a neuroscientist with an interest in Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. His research focuses on the clinical-pathological correlations of dementia, the role of reactive astrocytes and microglia in Alzheimer’s disease, and the mechanisms underlying the influence of APOE and other gene variants in Alzheimer’s disease risk. He has authored more than 50 research articles and has been awarded the 2021 American Neurological Association - Grass Foundation Award in Neuroscience.
“Research may seem like it is moving slowly, and it does. But, in my dual role of clinician and scientist, I absolutely share the sense of urgency that my patients and their families feel and express in the face of lack of effective therapies to stop, or at least slow down, the progression of dementia. And I also remain hopeful that we will soon be able to offer them something that works.”
- Alberto Serrano-Pozo
BIOGRAPHY
Alberto Serrano-Pozo grew up in Málaga, Spain, with his parents and three siblings. From a very young age, Dr. Serrano-Pozo was motivated to study hard. His father always taught him that no matter what he chose to do, he should always try do it right, and this attitude stayed with him throughout his education.
Alberto became interested in research already in high school, when he learned about the series of efforts that led to the discovery of the DNA double helix. He remembers vividly how that biology class ignited his scientific curiosity. He became an avid reader around that time, and fondly remembers trading book recommendations with his group of friends. After graduation, Dr. Serrano-Pozo attended medical school and earned his MD from the University of Málaga School of Medicine in 2001. During the course of his medical education, he decided to become a clinician-scientist, because he felt both connected to the patients and curious about the mechanisms of their diseases.
After graduation from medical school, Dr. Serrano-Pozo moved just a few hours away, to Seville, for his first residency in neurology at University Hospital Virgen del Rocío. It was the right move, he jokes, because it was in Seville where he met his wife, who was doing her residency in the same hospital. It is during his residency training in Spain that he decided to focus his career on Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. He pursued a two-year research and behavioral neurology fellowship at the same institution while his wife completed her residency, and they moved together to the United States in 2008 to get more research training.
Dr. Serrano-Pozo joined Dr. Bradley Hyman’s lab at Massachusetts General Hospital as a research fellow, where he investigated the
clinic-pathological correlations of Alzheimer’s dementia. His publications during this period led him to receive his PhD at the University of Seville in 2013. They then decided to pursue a clinician-scientist career in the United States and completed their neurology residency training at the University of Iowa in 2017, where Dr. Serrano-Pozo was Chief Resident.
Currently, Dr. Serrano-Pozo is an Assistant Professor of Neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Harvard Medical School. He is a board-certified neurologist and a neuroscientist with an interest in Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. His research focuses on the clinical-pathological correlations of dementia, the role of reactive astrocytes and microglia in Alzheimer’s disease, and the mechanisms underlying the influence of APOE and other gene variants in Alzheimer’s disease risk. He has authored more than 50 research articles and has been awarded the 2021 American Neurological Association - Grass Foundation Award in Neuroscience.
“Research may seem like it is moving slowly, and it does. But, in my dual role of clinician and scientist, I absolutely share the sense of urgency that my patients and their families feel and express in the face of lack of effective therapies to stop, or at least slow down, the progression of dementia. And I also remain hopeful that we will soon be able to offer them something that works.”
- Alberto Serrano-Pozo
Research Focus
Challenges
Around the world, approximately 50 million people have been diagnosed with dementia, a group of brain disorders that cause memory, thinking, behavior, and coordination to deteriorate. Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause. Every year, nearly 10 million new cases emerge. As the population ages, the numbers are projected to rise substantially.
Focus and Priorities
Dr. Serrano-Pozo is interested in Alzheimer’s disease, and his research project is focused on one type of brain cell called astrocyte. Astrocytes support neurons, which are the cells that produce process information and produce thoughts, words, and movements. Among their many functions, astrocytes tune the connections between neurons and ensure that they are getting the necessary nutrients.
Astrocytes change significantly with Alzheimer's disease and they appear to be reacting against the plaques and tangles that accumulate in the Alzheimer’s brain and define the disease. Through studying astrocytes in tissue sections from autopsied brains, Dr. Serrano-Pozo has described many of the morphological changes of these so-called “reactive astrocytes.”
However, it is technically very challenging to study the functional changes of reactive astrocytes directly in postmortem or living human brains, so Dr. Serrano-Pozo is using mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease, which have been genetically engineered to develop plaques and tangles that are very similar to those found in human brains. Indeed, these transgenic mice also exhibit reactive astrocytes around their plaques and tangles.
Using these mouse models, Dr. Serrano-Pozo is manipulating the reactive astrocytes to understand whether their reaction against plaques and tangles has good or bad consequences for the neurons and their connections.
Benefits
Dr. Serrano-Pozo hopes that this intervention on reactive astrocytes can be used to help the neurons switch back to normal and support their connections, thereby slowing down the progression of Alzheimer’s disease. While there has been a lot of emphasis on getting rid of the plaques and tangles, Dr. Serrano-Pozo feels it’s also important to focus on how the neurons shut down and die in Alzheimer’s disease and how to arrest or slow down that process through manipulation of the other brain cell types, like astrocytes.
Karen Toffler Charitable Trust Investment
The investment from the Karen Toffler Charitable Trust will allow Dr. Serrano-Pozo to focus time toward his goal of finding out whether lowering the levels of reactive astrocytes can slow the progression of Alzheimer’s. This research is high risk, so funding is difficult to obtain. This grant will allow Dr. Serrano-Pozo to further his research, which could eventually help improve the prognosis of the millions of people who are diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease each year.
Karen Toffler Charitable Trust Investment
The investment from the Karen Toffler Charitable Trust will allow Dr. Serrano-Pozo to focus time toward his goal of finding out whether lowering the levels of reactive astrocytes can slow the progression of Alzheimer’s. This research is high risk, so funding is difficult to obtain. This grant will allow Dr. Serrano-Pozo to further his research, which could eventually help improve the prognosis of the millions of people who are diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease each year.
“Funding from the Karen Toffler Charitable Trust is very timely because my project is very high risk, high yield. It’s not easy to get funding from other agencies because of the high risk nature of this research.”
- Alberto Serrano-Pozo