Kyle Brewer

Kyle has long been interested in cognition and longevity due to the central role they can have in human health. At the time when I was completing my PhD in protein-protein and protein-lipid interactions, research in the lab of Dr. Tony Wyss-Coray uncovered that young blood plasma transfusions in mice can rejuvenate the aged brain and improve cognition, an effect likely mediated by proteins. After completing my doctoral work, I was lucky enough to join the Wyss-Coray lab to study the mechanisms behind this amazing phenomenon. To do so, I planned to label proteins that may be involved in this process and decipher basic protein and lipid interactions that occur in the brain via approaches I learned during the course of my PhD. However, Dr. Carolyn Bertozzi, a founder of bioorthogonal chemistry in which labeled molecules can be studied inside a living system, had just joined Stanford and raised my notions of what was possible to the next level. Under the mentorship of Drs. Bertozzi and Wyss-Coray, I am now working on developing a mouse model to label proteins from a specified tissue that may produce youthful protein factors secreted into the bloodstream to determine if these factors can interact with or enter the brain. This model may allow us to develop more specific and/or potent preclinical strategies to target brain aging, such as in Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, as well as be a tool to study both systemic disease and aging in a variety of tissues.

Kyle was awarded a BS in Biochemistry and a BA in Chemistry from North Carolina State University while performing research under Dr. Mitch Eddy at the NIH-National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. He earned his PhD in biophysics in the laboratory of Dr. Josep Rizo at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center where he determined a structural model of the synaptotagmin-SNARE complex, proteins key to achieving rapid neurotransmitter release. He is currently working as a postdoctoral fellow with the laboratory of Dr. Tony Wyss-Coray in the Department of Neurology and Neurological Sciences. He also works in conjunction with the laboratory of Dr. Carolyn Bertozzi in the Department of Chemistry and ChEM-H.