Mike Henne, Ph.D.

W. Mike Henne, Ph.D.

Associate Professor & Director of the Lipid Metabolism & Neurodegenerative Diseases (LMND) Program

Dr. Henne received his B.S. in Cellular and Molecular Biology from Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas, and then accepted an MRC Scholarship from the UK to pursue graduate studies at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge University. As a student in the lab of Harvey McMahon, Ph.D., he studied how membrane sculpting BAR and F-BAR domain-containing proteins promote clathrin-mediated endocytosis. Mike was awarded the Max Perutz Prize for his graduate work.

Following graduate school, Dr. Henne began a postdoctoral position in the laboratory of Scott Emr, Ph.D., at Cornell University as a Sam & Nancy Fleming Research Fellow. There, he continued to study endomembrane trafficking, and how endosomes can be reshaped by the ESCRT pathway. He also developed a genome-wide screening approach in yeast, which identified the protein Mdm1 as a novel ER-vacuole/lysosome tethering protein (Henne, JCB, 2015). Capitalizing on these findings, he started his lab at UT Southwestern.

Dr. Henne's lab exists at the interface between lipid metabolism and human diseases. His lab has pioneered studies of the cerebellar ataxia disease SCAR20, and were among the first to report the cellular basis for this neurological disease, caused by loss-of-function mutations in the gene SNX14. Collaborative work revealed that SNX14 mutations cause defects in neuronal lipid metabolism and disrupts inter-organelle lipid transport, ultimately leading to Purkinje neuron death and progressive cerebellar ataxia. In 2025, Dr. Henne was awarded the Martha Lee Foster Professorship in Brain Science & Medicine for his contributions, and now serves as the Director of the Lipid Metabolism & Neurodegenerative Disease (LMND) Program at UTSW.

The Henne lab also pioneers studies of lipid droplets, the primary lipid storage organelles of eukaryotes that are closely linked to neurodegenerative diseases. Dr. Henne is a leading member of the global lipid droplet community, and recently served as co-organizer of the 2024 FASEB SRC Lipid Metabolism Conference, the major lipid droplet conference in North America. He continues to serve this community as the lead organizer of the 2026 FASEB Lipid Droplet Conference. The Henne lab combines state-of-the-arty biochemical, lipidomic, genetic, and cell biological approaches to deeply understand lipid metabolism and storage in the context of human health and neurological diseases. During his time as PI, Mike has secured funding related to his research from the NIH NIGMS, NIH NIDDK, the Searle Scholars program, the Ara Parseghian Medical Research Foundation, and the Welch Foundation.