Rita Sattler is professor of translational neuroscience and neurology at the Barrow Neurological Institute, Phoenix, AZ, and co-director of the interdisciplinary neuroscience PhD program at the ASU School of Life Sciences. She received her doctorate degree from the University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada and performed her postdoctoral training in the Department of Neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University, where she also obtained her first faculty position as Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurology.
Throughout her career, Sattler has focused her research on molecular and cellular mechanisms of neurodegeneration. Ongoing projects in her laboratory are aimed at identifying the role of altered RNA metabolism and synaptic dysfunction in neurodegenerative disorders, including amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Frontotemporal dementia (FTD), Alzheimer's disease and related dementias using human patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells as a disease model in addition to patient postmortem autopsy tissue and relevant mouse models.
She is funded through numerous federal grants and awards from disease foundations, as well as the Barrow Neurological Foundation.
Our laboratory studies the cellular and molecular mechanisms of neurodegeneration in central nervous system (CNS) disorders such as: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) frontotemporal dementia (FTD) We are particularly interested in elucidating the role of RNA processing and synaptic dysfunction in these diseases. We utilize different models to study disease mechanisms including patient-derived human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs), patient autopsy brain tissue, and animal models of disease. We employ state-of-the-art molecular, biochemical, and microscopy technologies.
