Michael Healy

Alzheimer’s disease is a debilitating neurodegenerative condition that has an enormous personal impact for people living with the disease, their families and carers. Currently, all attempts to find a cure for Alzheimer’s disease have failed and treatments only temporarily mitigate its effects. New approaches that act on the underlying causes of the disease are urgently needed. 

One approach is to develop treatments that target the regulation of protein movement throughout the cell. The goal is to prevent the build-up of toxic proteins and peptides that are seen in Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias. Dr Michael Healy has focused on a large protein complex known as “Commander”. This protein complex can be thought of as a postal worker that controls the flow of Alzheimer’s disease-related cargo through a system. When this system fails, cargo can accumulate, blocking important cellular functions and causing cell death. Dr Healy has uncovered the important regulatory mechanisms that control how the Commander is linked to a protein called SNX17, which is involved in delivering cellular cargo to the right location within a cell at the right time. 

In his future research, Dr Healy wants to strengthen his insights into the Commander complex and its role mediating SNX17-based membrane trafficking. By better understanding the fundamental biology of this system, it may be possible to develop new targeted therapies that treat the underlying causes of disease progression.

Read more about this exciting project

Butkovič, R., Walker, A.P., Healy, M.D. et al. Mechanism and regulation of cargo entry into the Commander endosomal recycling pathway. Nat Communications 15, 7180 (2024).

At the time of the award, Dr Michael Healy was a postdoctoral research fellow working at the Institute for Molecular Biosciences in the lab of Professor Collins.