Roger Rosenberg, M.D.

Development of a DNA Aβ42 Vaccine to Prevent Alzheimer’s Disease is my major scientific interest and effort in my laboratory. I have spent the past 30 years in research in neurodegenerative diseases and Alzheimer’s disease in particular. I served as a post-doctoral fellow for Nobel Laureate, Marshall W. Nurenberg, Ph.
D., Chief, Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics, NIH, which provided me with the background to develop a DNA vaccine for Alzheimer's Disease. I have been at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center since 1973, hold the Abe (Brunky), Morris and William Zale Distinguished Chair, am Professor of Neurology and Neurotherapeutics and Physiology and have Chaired the Department of Neurology from 1973- 1991. I am the founding Director of the NIH funded Alzheimer’s Disease Center at UT Southwestern and it has been funded now through five consecutive competitive funding cycles since 1988 and will be funded through 2016 representing 28 years of continuous NIH Center funding.

My early amyloid related research in the UT Southwestern Alzheimer’s Disease Center is directed at determining amyloid precursor protein (APP) processing by neural cells in culture as a model system for the abnormal deposition of amyloid in the brain of Alzheimer’s disease patients. I have described  a platelet APP bio-marker that correlates in a linear manner with the severity of patient dementia . In 2006, I published that human platelets utilize beta and gamma secretase to produce Aβ42 and that platelets from Alzheimer’s disease patients synthesize more Aβ42  than control platelets due to an increased activity of beta-secretase. Platelet A β42 levels may be an important bio-marker for Alzheimer’s disease and a means to monitor effectiveness of drug effect in clinical trials.

In 2006, I published with colleagues in my laboratory that a DNA A β42 vaccine can reduce Abeta42 peptide levels in the brain of AD transgenic mice by 50%. Since 2003, we have shown a DNA A β42 vaccine with the gene gun produces in Alzheimer transgenic mice an anti-A β42 antibody of the IgG1/Th2 type which is known to be anti-inflammatory. More recently we have shown that this DNA vaccine induces CD4 non-inflammatory spleenocytes and not CD8 pro-inflammatory cells which are induced by  Aβ42 peptide vaccination. We have shown that A β42 peptide vaccination produces a Th1 and Th2 immune response that is 1:1( IgG1 ratio with IgG2a is 1:1) and thus brain inflammation with A β42  peptide vaccination is due to the induction of  a pro-inflammatory immune response not seen with DNA A β42 vaccination.  The DNA vaccine produces a highly predominant Th2 immune response  (Th2/Th1 is 10:1 ratio). A clinical trial with Alzheimer’s disease patients is being developed using this new DNA gene vaccination methodology. I received in 2009 a US Patent as the Inventor of “Amyloid Beta Gene Vaccines”.

My other major area of research has been the molecular and clinical study of genetic neurological diseases. In that regard, I have been most active in studying the inherited ataxias including Machado-Joseph disease which I described initially with William Nyhan, M.D. Ph.D, in 1976. Our collaborative group mapped the chromosomal location of this disease to 14q24.3, and determined the molecular mutation causal of the disease in patients throughout the world (United States, Portugal, Canada, Japan, Brazil, Spain, France, England, China) is an increase in CAG unstable DNA triplet repeats which represents a novel, new mechanism of disease. CAG repeat levels in the MJD gene is now a commercially available bio-marker which has been shown to be effective in reducing the prevalence of this dominantly inherited spinocerebellar degeneration in at risk persons in families known to have the disease.

In 2017, we published the vaccine is effective producing high titers of anti-Abeta42 antibody and produces a Th2 non-inflammatory immune response in New Zealand white rabbits and rhesus monkeys. In 2018, we published showing the vaccine reduces by 50% Abeta42 peptide, tau and phospho-tau levels in the brains of the 3X AD Tg mouse model.

In 2021, I published "The Universal Brain Code  A Genetic Mechanism for Memory". It proposes a new concept as to how the brain stores and retrieves information. It incorporates the concept that the afferent electrical current to the dendritic tree of a pre-synaptic neuron induces an epigenomic signal which activates the expression of specific genes by  pre-synaptic neurons  to synthesize specific proteins to guide and facilitate the transfer of the memory engram to the post-synaptic neuron. These newly synthesized proteins act as biological switches at the synapse to transfer information accurately in the electrical circuit from the pre-synaptic to the post-synaptic neuron.