New York, New York, United States
In the past 30 years at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and also 25 years in the Veteran Heath Administration. My science focused on molecular mechanisms associated to gut-brain interactions with emphasis on the microbiome in promoting cognitive and psychological health. Utilizing expertise in neuroscience, molecular and computational biology and experimental models, I lead research initiatives to address aging-related cognitive decline and stress-related health challenges being eventually translated into clinical therapeutic studies . My science efforts align with the institutions mission to advance the understanding and treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease and related dementia (ADRD).By bridging preclinical findings with clinical applications, I aim to develop effective therapeutic interventions that enhance cognitive resilience and improve outcomes for patients facing neurodegenerative conditions.
The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai was recently designed as a Center by the NIH’s Office of Dietary Supplements (ODS) and the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) to understand mechanistically the potential role of certain botanical dietary supplements, in particular polyphenols, against stressful events and to clarify the role of gastrointestinal microflora (microbiome) at the genomic level in the promotion of cognitive and psychological health. Mount Sinai received a competitive award for $10 million for five years to conduct research under the leadership of the Program Director Dr. Giulio Maria Pasinetti in the Department of Neurology. The Center will support three major projects which will be conducted through interdisciplinary collaborative efforts from the Department of Neuroscience, Department of Neurology, Department of Genetics and Genomic Sciences, and the Friedman Brain Institute. The Center research will lead to safe and efficacious treatments of dietary botanical supplements to promote resilience in response to psychological and cognitive stress.
The primary research goals in Dr. Pasinetti's lab is to investigate the biological processes which occur when, during aging, subjects with normal cognitive functions convert into the very earliest stages of Alzheimer's disease and then to frank dementia. The long-term goal of Dr. Pasinetti's lab is to improve the diagnosis of patients who are in the very earliest stages of Alzheimer's disease, and to identify early molecular neurobiological abnormalities so that effective pharmacological treatments to slow or halt disease progression can be developed. More recently. Dr. Pasinetti has conducted a meta-analysis of data from multiple genomic-wide association studies to explore shared genetic etiologic factors that may underlie both Alzheimer's disease and type 2 diabetes. Collectively, Dr. Pasinetti studied suggest that among type 2 diabetic (T2D) subjects with shared single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) having consistent risk alleles for T2D and AD as common genetic predisposition factors for both diseases, pathogenic pathways mediated by these shared SNPs may mechanistically contribute to the risk of these subjects to eventually develop AD. Our evidence provides the much needed information for the design of future novel therapeutic approaches, specifically targeting a subpopulation of T2D subjects with genetic disposition to AD, to simultaneously modulate T2D phenotypes and risk for AD dementia. Dr. Pasinetti's lab, using a combination of genomic-proteomic techniques, is presently characterizing and purifying abnormal expressed gene products in the brain that may also share similarities in respect with promotion of neurodegenerative disorders including Progressive Supranuclear Palsy and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. Based on the outcome of these studies, Dr Pasinetti is presently using newly developed transgenic mouse models of disease to test pre-clinically the potential therapeutic relevance of novel drug treatments, for example to treat T2D to attenuate AD.
Dr. Pasinetti, as the Chief of Brain Institute Center of Excellence for Novel Approaches to Neurodiagnostics and Therapeutic, has developed novel drug discovery programs for Alzheimer’s disease (AD), one of the most prevalent neurodegenerative disease of aging. Based on this consideration, Dr. Pasinetti is leading a primary transnational Center to determine whether inventions which appear to work in the preclinical animal model of the disease also show promise in treating patients who have the disease. A major challenge of the Center is based on the fact that despite evidence of successful preclinical studies, translational human studies often fail to the give the epected results. Therefore, Dr. Pasinetti is utilizing innovateive genomic and proteomic technologies, which offer the promise to shed light on largely unseen details of disease causality, onset, and progression. Dr. Pasinetti's transnational research is currently leading to earlier diagnosis and possibly interventions with more specific treatments predicated on an individual's specific genomic fingerprint. Through this approach, the Center will identify new therapies that will provide clinical benefits to patients.
Dr. Pasinetti is a Director of Basic and Biomedical Research and Training at the Geriatric Education and Clinical Research at the James J Peters Veterans Affairs, Bronx where he developed programs to train health science students in the field of geriatrics in order to help increase the basic knowledge of aging, transmit this knowledge to health care providers, and improve the quality of care delivered to elders. Among others, Dr. Pasinetti has fostered the development of training areas ranging from caregiver stress related disorders and characterization of biomarkers of resilience in rodent models of mood disorders, training in back pain therapy and rehabilitation, and preventative initiatives to delay cognitive deterioration thorough T2 diabetes control in the aged. Collectively, the work of Dr. Pasinetti directly develops research to improve the care and treatment for the aging Veteran population while at the same time training many of the healthcare professional which will provide that care for years to come.