Sabine Gilch
Positions
Professor
Faculty of Veterinary Medicine
Full Member
Hotchkiss Brain Institute
Full Member
The Calvin, Phoebe and Joan Snyder Institute for Chronic Diseases
Adjunct Professor
Cumming School of Medicine, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Contact information
Phone number
Office: +1 (403) 210-7578
Background
Educational Background
Doctor of Philosophy Molecular Biotechnology, Munich Technical University, 2009
M.Sc. Molecular Biotechnology, Munich Technical University, 2008
B.Sc. Molecular Biology, Johannes Gutenberg U (Mainz), 2006
Research
Areas of Research
Prions are fascinating infectious agents and strikingly di erent from viruses and bacteria since they only consist of a misfolded version of a host protein and replicate without using encoding nucleic acids. Instead, prions propagate by inducing conformational changes in the cellular prion protein, which makes it prone to aggregation. Misfolded prion protein accumulates in brain cells and results in neuronal death. Prion diseases are strictly fatal neurodegenerative disorders of humans (e.g. Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease) and animals, such as BSE or mad cow disease, scrapie in sheep and goat, and chronic wasting disease (CWD) of wild and farmed cervids. They can occur sporadically, upon mutations in the prion protein gene, or by transmission within the same or between di erent species. Our research focuses on understanding the impact of prion infection on cholesterol metabolism and endocytic tra cking in neurons, with the goal to define new targets for treatment of prion disease using prion-infected primary neurons, cell lines and mouse models. We investigate whether CWD has the potential to transmit to humans, and how CWD prion strains arise from allelic variants of the cervid prion protein using biochemical, biophysical and in vivo characterization in transgenic and knock-in mouse models of CWD our lab has generated.
Participation in university strategic initiatives
Courses
| Course number | Course title | Semester |
|---|---|---|
| VM324 | Molecular Biology and Genetics | |
| VM422 | Virology | |
| CMMB 421 | Virology | |
| MDSC 674.02 | Molecular, Cellular and Microbial Biology and Immunology |
Projects
Awards
- UCalgary Research Excellence Chair, University of Calgary. 2023
- Canada Research Chair in Prion Disease Research (Tier 2), 2018
- University of Calgary PEAK Scholar, University of Calgary. 2017
- Canada Research Chair in Prion Disease Research (Tier 2), 2013
Publications
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