Evening with Dr. Petsko

    Tuesday, October 7, 2014 at 3:45 PMEastern Daylight Time UTC -04:00


    Albion College
    100 N Hannah St
    Albion, MI 49224
    United States

    Schedule for An Evening with Dr. Petsko


    (Optional: 2:15 – 3:15 p.m. Campus Tour)

    3:45 p.m. Registration in Bonta Admissions Center (100 N. Hannah St., Albion, MI)

    4:00 – 5:00 p.m.  Join current healthcare students in a private meeting with Dr. Petsko (Wendell Will Room, Library)
    Join our distinguished guest and our students in an informal discussion about moving medical research from bench to bedside. (Students only)

    5:30 – 7:00 p.m. Dinner with Albion faculty and students
    Join our students and faculty from a variety of disciplines to learn about how we prepare students for  careers in healthcare. (Parents and friends welcome)

    7:30 – 8:30 p.m.  Phi Beta Kappa Lecture: “The Coming Epidemic of Neurodegenerative Diseases and What Science Is and Should Be Doing About It” by Dr. Gregory Petsko (Norris 101, Towsley Hall)

    The Earth’s population is aging fast, and the coming sharp increase in the number of people over age sixty-five will bring with it an epidemic of age-related neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. Currently, no cures exist for the major neurologic disorders. Unless cures can be found, by 2050 the cost of these diseases will exceed $1 trillion annually in the United States, and the burden for other countries will scale with their populations. Despite exciting advances in our understanding of these diseases, both government research funding and the efforts of industry have failed to keep pace with this unmet medical need. Private philanthropy has done better, but the total dollars spent on developing diagnostics and therapeutics for neurologic disorders still lags far behind that spent on much less prevalent diseases. The challenge for biomedical research in the next forty years is to identify markers that would allow early detection of high-risk cohorts, and to develop therapies that either will prevent the diseases from starting at all in susceptible populations or will arrest their progression before severe damage to the central nervous system has occurred.  I will provide evidence that the world is facing a crisis comparable to that of climate change, and talk about exactly what needs to be done about it.  (Parents and friends welcome)

    8:30 p.m. Post-talk reception (Norris Science Center, Lobby)



     

    Registration is no longer available.