Rafaella A Gonçalves, Phd Email & Phone Number

Dr. Lennart Mucke's lab Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease and the University of California San Francisco

Kingston, Ontario, Canada

PhD candidate supervised by Dr Douglas Munoz and Dr Fernanda De Felice.*Project 1: The role of interleukin-6 in Alzheimer's disease. Co-led study identifying interleukin-6 as a mediator of memory and metabolic alterations in AD (Lyra e Silva NM, Gonçalves RA et al., 2021, Translational Psychiatry).*Project 2: The role of the exercise induced-hormone irisin in Alzheimer's disease and depression. Led a study showing for the first time that the hormone irisin is reduced in the cerebrospinal fluid of elderly individuals with depression (Gonçalves RA et al., 2022, Alzheimers & Dementia), and contributed to characterize that irisin is reduced in AD patients, and has neuroprotective effects in AD mouse models (Lourenco MV et al., 2019, Nature Medicine).*Project 3: Characterization of blood-based biomarkers of neurodegeneration using neuronal-derived extracellular vesicles.

Kingston, Ontario, Canada

Kingston, Ontario, Canada

Courses: Biochemical Basis of Health and Disease (BCHM270), Introduction to Statistics for the Health Sciences (HSCI190), Molecular Biology (BCHM218), and Introduction to Biochemistry (BCHM102).

Rio De Janeiro, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil

MSc student at Dr Fernanda De Felice's lab investigating metabolic alterations and hypothalamic dysfunction in mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease.

Rio De Janeiro, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil

Undergraduate research fellow supervised by Dr Matthias Gralle in the project "Characterization of a new mouse model of Parkinson`s disease from intracerebroventricular injections of α-synuclein oligomers." Contributed to characterize the potential of α-synuclein oligomers in recapitulating early Parkinson`s Disease-associated symptoms in mice (Fortuna JTS et al. 2017, Behavioural Brain Research).

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Visiting MSc student at Dr Paul Fraser`s lab working in the project "Hypothalamic dysfunction and impaired peripheral glucose homeostasis in mouse models of tau gain and loss of function". Contributed to identify a novel physiological function for tau protein in glucose homeostasis and pancreatic function (Wijesekara N et al., 2018, The FASEB Journal), and led a study indicating a role for tau protein in the modulation of insulin sensitivity and anxiety-related behavior in mice (Gonçalves RA et al., 2020, Frontiers in endocrinology).

Baltimore, Maryland

Visiting undergraduate researcher at Dr Ted Dawson's lab being directly supervised by Dr Xiaobo Mao in the project "Identification of a potential ligand for pathological α-synuclein in neurons". Contributed to identify lymphocyte-activation gene 3 (LAG3) as a receptor that binds misfolded preformed fibrils of α-synuclein (Mao X et al., 2016, Science).

Doctor Of Philosophy - Phd Candidate, Neuroscience

Master Of Science - Msc, Biological Chemistry

Bachelor Of Science - Bsc, Biological Sciences (Genetics)

Exchange Student - Bsc, Biological Sciences