Shai Shaham, PhD
Dr. Shaham is an Assistant Professor at Rockeller University. He received his AB degree in Biochemistry from Columbia University in New York, and his PhD degree in Biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Subsequently, he was a Helen Hay Whitney Foundation postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, San Francisco
Dr. Shaham’s graduate and postdoctoral research focused on the molecular mechanisms that control programmed cell death (apoptosis), a process that can go awry in a number of aging-related disorders including Alzheimer’s Disease. As a Brookdale Fellow, Dr. Shaham continued his research on programmed cell death by identifying genes required for this process in the small soil nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. Dr. Shaham’s research focused on the roles played by enzymes termed caspases, which play key roles in promoting programmed cell death in both nematodes and humans. Caspases are thought to promote cell death by cleaving a set of currently poorly described target proteins. Dr. Shaham’s research aims to define these proteins in C. elegans using a combination of genetic and biochemical strategies. Counterparts of these proteins will then be isolated and assayed for their roles in human programmed cell death. The long-term aim of this project is to define human cell-death proteins whose functions can be pharmaceutically altered in the hope of treating a host of aging-related diseases including stroke, myocardial infarction, Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease.
Brookdale Fellow Class of 1999