For our 30th episode of 17 Minutes of Science, we were joined by Sangeetha Iyer, a senior scientist at Denali Therapeutics, a biotechnology company focused on the discovery and development of therapies for patients with neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, ALS and others.

Sangeetha has a background in neurodegenerative disorders and rare genetic diseases, and before she joined Denali she was working at Perlara BBC where she also focused her research on finding treatments for rare diseases. Recently, Sangeetha helped to published a paper (Repurposing the aldose reductase inhibitor and diabetic neuropathy drug epalrestat for the congenital disorder of glycosylation PMM2-CDG). The findings from this paper have been used in an n of 1 study that has so far been showing positive results for a young girl.

Sangeetha will be joining us to talk more about her work in the rare disease field, her recent paper, and the benefits of using model organisms for rare disease research.