Dr. Tansey came to the Department of Physiology from the biotech industry in California where she led a multi-disciplinary team of scientists to develop biochemical and cell-based assays to screen computationally designed protein variants for biotherapeutic applications, Dr Tansey earned her Ph.D. at UT Southwestern and went on to do postdoctoral studies at both UT Southwestern and Washington University. While at the latter she focused on the neuronal survival signaling mechanisms mediated by the GDNF family of ligands (GFLs). She was a major contributor to several projects involving GFL action but primarily focused on signal transduction pathways. Recent publications in Neuron and Journal of Neuroscience elegantly showed the importance of lipid rafts and lipid-raft resident proteins (c-Src) in mediating biological effects of GFLs. Collectively her investigations as a postdoctoral fellow have resulted in publications in distinguished peer reviewed journals including Journal of Neuroscience, Neuron, Journal of Biological Chemistry, and Journal of Cell Biology. Upon her arrival at UT Southwestern she completed in vivo validation of novel structure-based dominant negative TNF inhibitors to demonstrate neutralization of circulating levels of the pro-inflammatory cytokine TNF in models of peripheral inflammation, work that was published in the journal Science. She is currently using these novel tools in models of neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s Disease to investigate the role of TNF-mediated inflammation and neurotoxicity in neurodegenerative processes.
