- University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, Philadelphia, Pa., Head, Alzheimer ’s Disease Genetics Consortium, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
Dr. Schellenberg received his Ph.D. from the University of California - Riverside in 1978. Subsequently he was a Research Professor at the University of Washington. In 2008, he became a Professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine in the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania. His work focuses in the genetics of neurodegenerative disorders including Alzheimer’s, progressive supranuclear palsy, different forms of frontotemporal lobar degeneration and Guam amyotrophic lateral sclerosis/parkinsonism dementia complex. His career has focused on applying advanced genome technology to the problem of finding the underlying causes of human diseases.
Dr. Schellenberg founded the Alzheimer’s Disease Genetics Consortium (ADGC), which is comprised of a group of investigators who are using genome-wide association analysis methods to identify Alzheimer’s disease genes. The ADGC has amassed clinical and genetic information on over 25,000 late-onset Alzheimer’s cases and 30,000 cognitively normal elderly subjects, and identified over 20 novel risk genes for this devastating disease. Dr. Schellenberg and colleagues are now participating in the Alzheimer’s Disease Sequencing Project (ADSP) where genomic sequence is being generated for over 4,000 subjects. Dr. Schellenberg is analyzing these data for genetic changes that lead to Alzheimer’s disease with the eventual goal of identifying novel therapeutic targets.