Dena Dubal is the David A. Coulter Endowed Chair in Ageing and Neurodegenerative Disease at

University of California, San Francisco The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is a public land-grant research university in San Francisco, California. It is part of the University of California system and is dedicated entirely to health science and life science. It cond ...

. Dubal has demonstrated that the hormone Klotho can enhance cognition and protect the brain from neurodegenerative decline.

Early life and education

Dubal is from

Houston Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 in ...

. She attended Episcopal High School and graduated in 1992. She was an undergraduate student at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

, where she studied

neuroscience Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system (the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system), its functions and disorders. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, development ...

with a minor in

anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of behavi ...

. During her undergraduate physiology classes she recognised that the process of ageing still presented many mysteries to the scientific community. After earning her bachelor's degree, Dubal studied medicine at the

University of Kentucky College of Medicine A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, the ...

. She worked with

Phyllis Wise Phyllis M. Wise (Chinese name 王斐丽) is a biomedical researcher. Most recently, she is currently serving as the inaugural Chief Executive Officer and President of Colorado Longitudinal Study. Family and education Wise is the daughter of M ...

on the impact of hormones on brain injury caused by stroke. She was a neurological resident at the

, where she was elected Chief Resident and continued to research ageing.

Research and career

Dubal studies the molecular mechanisms of resilience and how these are impacted by neurodegenerative diseases. She holds the David A. Coulter Endowed Chair in Ageing and Neurodegenerative Disease at University of California, San Francisco, and practises as a neurologist in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

. In 2011 she started working on the Klotho hormone. At the time it was known that mice who were bred to make extra Klotho had lives that were 30% longer than those without it. Dubal demonstrated that mice with

Alzheimer's disease Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegeneration, neurodegenerative disease that usually starts slowly and progressively worsens. It is the cause of 60–70% of cases of dementia. The most common early symptom is difficulty in short-term me ...

with extra Klotho were protected from

dementia Dementia is a disorder which manifests as a set of related symptoms, which usually surfaces when the brain is damaged by injury or disease. The symptoms involve progressive impairments in memory, thinking, and behavior, which negatively affe ...

. She went on to show that the brains of healthy mice with extra Klotho were not only protected from neurodegeneration, but their cognitive abilities were enhanced. It has since been shown that Klotho can act to protect against

Parkinson's Parkinson's disease (PD), or simply Parkinson's, is a long-term degenerative disorder of the central nervous system that mainly affects the motor system. The symptoms usually emerge slowly, and as the disease worsens, non-motor symptoms becom ...

and

multiple sclerosis Multiple (cerebral) sclerosis (MS), also known as encephalomyelitis disseminata or disseminated sclerosis, is the most common demyelinating disease, in which the insulating covers of nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord are damaged. This d ...

. The mechanisms that underpin Klotho's enhancement of cognitive ability are still unknown. Alongside working on mouse models, in 2019 Dubal was the first to show that Klotho may protect people from Alzheimer's disease. She demonstrated this by monitoring for the well-known Alzheimer's disease risk factors

Apolipoprotein E Apolipoprotein E (APOE) is a protein involved in the metabolism of fats in the body of mammals. A subtype is implicated in Alzheimer's disease and cardiovascular disease. APOE belongs to a family of fat-binding proteins called apolipoproteins. ...

(APOE) e4. Dubal revealed that patients with the genetic variant APOE e4 have biomarkers of Alzheimer's disease, even before experiencing symptoms, whilst patients with APOE e4 and Klotho do not have these biomarkers. Dubal has identified a biological mechanism – an epigenetic change on the

X chromosome The X chromosome is one of the two sex-determining chromosomes (allosomes) in many organisms, including mammals (the other is the Y chromosome), and is found in both males and females. It is a part of the XY sex-determination system and XO sex-d ...

– that may give rise to why women live longer. She has shown that female mice with a particular pattern of sex hormones during their

ovarian cycle The menstrual cycle is a series of natural changes in hormone production and the structures of the uterus and ovaries of the female reproductive system that make pregnancy possible. The ovarian cycle controls the production and release of eggs a ...

are more likely to suffer from

cognitive decline Dementia is a disorder which manifests as a set of related symptoms, which usually surfaces when the brain is damaged by injury or disease. The symptoms involve progressive impairments in memory, thinking, and behavior, which negatively affec ...

Awards and honours

* 2009

American Federation for Aging Research The American Federation for Aging Research (AFAR) is a private, charitable The practice of charity is the voluntary giving of help to those in need, as a humanitarian act, unmotivated by self-interest. There are a number of philosophies about cha ...

Paul Beeson Career Development Award * 2015

American Neurological Association The American Neurological Association (ANA) is a professional society of academic neurologists and neuroscientists devoted to advancing the goals of academic neurology; to training and educating neurologists and other physicians in the neurologic ...

Grass Neuroscience Award

Selected publications

* * *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dubal, Dena Living people Year of birth missing (living people) American neuroscientists American women neuroscientists University of California, San Francisco faculty University of California, Berkeley alumni University of Kentucky alumni 21st-century American women