Stuff that happened in the early years
Years 1 through 10, for the nostalgic. Several of the external links here are more than a decade old and may no longer resolve.
Maria is awarded her F31. Tom is awarded his K23. Congratulations to both of you, and THANK YOU for providing some much-needed good news in the middle of a global pandemic!! David and Tom find that with genotypes at just 3 SNPs plus age at symptom onset, you can guess reasonably well which PD and DLB patients will have concomitant Alzheimer's Disease pathology at autopsy — preprint here.
Junchao and Fei join the lab. Welcome! Alice and Maria ask whether "omics" are hope or hype in an (opinionated) review for Trends in Genetics — read it here.
Noor and Rebecca join our team. Welcome!
Multiple years, multiple cohorts in the making, we find that plasma GHR, BSP, OMD, and Aminoacylase-1 differentiate PD from controls, after screening 1000+ proteins in 500+ people — Marijan and Maria's paper.
Amazingly, two lines of research in the lab have converged! We find that TMEM106B, a gene we have been studying for years in frontotemporal dementia, modifies the rate of cognitive decline in Parkinson's Disease — Tom's paper. Our fabulous undergraduates Yunji, Ben, and Daniel are upping the game in the lab. David begins his lab rotation. Welcome, all!
Alice and Maria attend the launch of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Neurodegeneration Challenge representing one of the collaborative science teams (with David Walt and George Church). Alice is later profiled by the CZI — you can learn what book she has read more than 15 times here.
Defne and Alice, in collaboration with Beverly Davidson, try to deliver GRN using AAV viral vectors. We get an unexpected immune response — read about it here.
Alice and Henrik Zetterberg argue that it's time to update our definitions of Parkinson's Disease for a molecular age in a perspective in the Journal of Parkinson's Disease.
Jeremy and Noah join the lab. Welcome!
Alice wins the Derek Denny Brown Award from the American Neurological Association — announcement here.
We launch the Molecular Integration in Neurological Diagnosis initiative with support from the Penn Translational Neuroscience Center and the Penn Center for Precision Medicine. Our goal is to molecularly characterize all of the (2000+) Parkinson's Disease patients seen in our clinic.
Alice and her 40 closest friends write a perspective for Science Translational Medicine on what is needed to develop useful biomarkers for Parkinson's Disease — the paper.
Mike and Alice write a review on what has happened post-GWAS in human genetics. We think it's time to tackle function. And we're not just talking about eQTL analyses.
Tom publishes his paper investigating predictors of cognitive decline in PD in Movement Disorders. TLDR version: Alzheimer's Disease-related processes are really important.
Alice joins the Executive Scientific Advisory Board for the Michael J. Fox Foundation — excited to make some inroads against Parkinson's Disease!
Mike's tour-de-force paper demonstrating that the causal SNP at the chromosome 7 locus associated with FTD alters chromatin architecture and thus expression of TMEM106B is published in AJHG. Press here.
Nimansha is chosen for a Rose Award for her undergraduate thesis work with our lab. Only 10 are awarded per year, across all fields. Congratulations, Nimansha, and well-deserved!
Michelle is awarded the American Academy of Neurology Clinical Research Training Fellowship in Parkinson's Disease for her work with the lab! She is the sole winner in Parkinson's Disease. Mike successfully defends his PhD thesis! Congratulations, Mike!
Laura Baratta joins the lab. Welcome, Laura.
Pilar Hernandez-Con joins the lab. Welcome, Pilar.
Our work on pharmacogenetics in Parkinson's Disease is awarded one of the first pilot awards from the Penn Center for Precision Medicine.
Alice finds out that she is tenured one day before our six-year anniversary! She writes a gushy letter and decides to try her hand at blogging in response.
Christine Cooper's work on SNPs that predict motor progression in PD is featured in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Defne is the sole Philadelphia winner of the Brody Fellowship for research support. Alice opines on "Neuroscience Trials of the Future" at the National Academy of Medicine.
Marijan Posavi joins the lab. Welcome, Marijan.
Sixth lab baby (6 babies in under 6 years… productive in many ways) is born. Congratulations, Rakshita!
Alice is one of this year's Distinguished Alumni Award winners for the Duke TIP program. Alice is very nervous about following John Green, a previous Distinguished Alum and author of The Fault in Our Stars, but she is excited to relive her many wonderful memories of summers spent at nerd camp on the Duke East Campus. Here is her "ode to being a physician-scientist," pitched at the under-13 crowd.
Alice is very honored to be this year's internal speaker for the Penn Combined Degree students. Especially as she only has one degree herself. She also tries her hand at public lecturing courtesy of the Neuroscience Graduate Group.
Rakshita Charan joins the lab. Welcome, Rakshita.
Mike's NRSA application is funded on his first try. With an unbelievable score. Good job, Mike!
Alice's summer book report (a.k.a. review in Neuron) on how to find biomarkers in neurodegenerative disease is published — the paper.
Christine's paper demonstrates that genetic variation in the APOA1 gene promoter correlates with ApoA1 levels in PD — the paper.
His and Hers Beach Lab Party with the Plotkin lab! Jordan Mak joins the lab. Welcome, Jordan.
Fifth lab baby is born. (5 babies in under 5 years. The fertility is astounding!!) Congratulations, Defne!
Fourth lab baby is born. Congratulations, Travis! Yosef wins the Joseph Leidy award for undergraduate research for his work in the lab. Congratulations, Yosef!
Alice wins the Jon Stolk Award (for research in movement disorders) from the American Academy of Neurology. Yosef reports on Alice and his work on statins in PD at the same meeting.
Defne Amado (then a neurology resident) learns that her R25 research project in biomarker discovery is funded. Christine wins one of just two Brody Fellowships awarded for postdoctoral research support. Gentlemen of the lab, the ladies are KILLING it right now… Mike's paper demonstrates that TMEM106B is the first known genetic modifier of frontotemporal dementia associated with hexanucleotide expansions in C9orf72 — the paper.
Third lab baby is born. Congratulations, Ashley! The whole Chen-Plotkin family (consisting of 2.5 scientists so far) is featured on a podcast by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. Alice and Judy's work nominating Apolipoprotein A1 as a biomarker for Parkinson's Disease risk is featured by the Dana Foundation.
Johanna's NRSA application is funded on her first try. Way to go, Jo!
Lab beach party! See pics in the gallery.
Tyler Skrinak joins the lab. Our wonderful "Boys of Summer" (Ben Liu and Yosef Berlyand) win awards to conduct their summer research projects in the lab. The lab now acquires a sporty bent, which is very surprising to Alice (who once won the "Best Effort" trophy at tennis camp).
Robert Arauz-Perez joins the lab.
Christine Swanson joins the lab. Big first day — attending the launch of the PD Biomarkers program at the NIH.
Second lab baby is born. The lab is disappointed that Alice did not name her Alexa Fluor Chen-Plotkin.
Our TMEM106B paper is published.
Pierce passes his prelim!
Mike passes his prelim!
First lab baby is born! Congratulations, Travis!
Pierce Nathanson joins the lab.
The lab moves to Johnson 1. Three stressful days — then up and running again (yes, hard to believe, but it's true).
Johanna passes her prelim! Alice wins a Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Clinician-Scientist Development Award.
Emily Ashbridge is accepted to both UPenn and UChicago for college. She is featured in the Philadelphia Inquirer for her softball and academic prowess, but can't be photographed because she is presenting her research at the American Academy of Neurology.
Johanna Busch and Mike Gallagher join the lab.
Our PD biomarker work is featured on the UPenn School of Medicine home page, local NPR station WHYY, and CBS3. Emily Ashbridge publishes her first paper ever. As co-first author. As a high school student. (Vass et al., 2010.)
Alice is featured in the UPenn Institute on Aging Newsletter.
The lab opens its doors. Alice is featured on the NIH Blueprint in Neuroscience website.
Alice wins the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award for Medical Scientists.