Sep 15, 2026 · 35 min · 10 segments
Robert Bowser, PhD, is Chief Scientific Officer and the John P. and Betty Van Denburgh Chair for Neuromuscular Disease, and professor and Chair of the Department of Translational Neuroscience at…
Robert BowserGuest
Tony HeilHost
as you, as you mentioned, I actually grew up in Pittsburgh, um, just north of Pittsburgh.
And in, when I started my academic career, my, my lab at the university of Pittsburgh school of medicine back in the nineties, um, I was really working in Alzheimer's disease for the most part.
and done my training in the Alzheimer's world, had identified a gene and was studying its expression patterns in human brain and in spinal cord, and found that it was alternatively expressed in people with ALS.
And that there was great opportunity, because especially back at that point, there wasn't a ton of research going on in the ALS world.
And I thought I could make a bigger impact in the world of ALS than I could in Alzheimer's disease.
And so really pivoted my lab and my focus back in the late 90s to really focus specifically in on ALS and related diseases.
as you, as you mentioned, I actually grew up in Pittsburgh, um, just north of Pittsburgh.
And in, when I started my academic career, my, my lab at the university of Pittsburgh school of medicine back in the nineties, um, I was really working in Alzheimer's disease for the most part.
and done my training in the Alzheimer's world, had identified a gene and was studying its expression patterns in human brain and in spinal cord, and found that it was alternatively expressed in people with ALS.
And that there was great opportunity, because especially back at that point, there wasn't a ton of research going on in the ALS world.
And I thought I could make a bigger impact in the world of ALS than I could in Alzheimer's disease.
And so really pivoted my lab and my focus back in the late 90s to really focus specifically in on ALS and related diseases.
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