School of Pharmacy Professor Roberta Diaz Brinton Appears on Good Morning America as Part of Shriver's Reporting

October 18, 2010

First Lady of California Maria Shriver is bringing attention to Alzheimer's disease through her annual Shriver Report, with this year’s edition entitled “A Woman's Nation Takes on Alzheimer’s”. The Shriver Report examines Alzheimer’s effect on women  and digests the current trends in thinking about the disease,  examines the latest medical research, looks at societal impacts, and includes a groundbreaking and comprehensive national poll. 

The report, a collaboration between Shriver and the Alzheimer’s Association, brought Shriver to the USC School of Pharmacy to learn about the research of Professor Roberta Diaz Brinton. Brinton’s cutting-edge Alzheimer’s research, particularly on how the disease relates to women, was featured on today’s Good Morning America.

  In the Good Morning America segment, Brinton explains that there is a connection between menopause and the development of Alzheimer’s, and that the disease can start to form in women as early as their 40s and 50s. Her advice to women of this age? “Maintain brain health by avoiding diseases like type 2 diabetes,” she told Shriver on the show.

Citizen Scientist

Science 13 August 2010: 
Vol. 329 no. 5993 p. 733
DOI: 10.1126/science.329.5993.733-d

University of Southern California (USC) neuroscientist Roberta Diaz Brinton was among 13 people honored at the White House last week with the 2010 Presidential Citizens Medal, the nation's second highest civilian honor. Brinton, who studies how aging and neurodegenerative disease affect the neural mechanisms of cognition, was recognized for her contributions to science and technology education.

“When I was a graduate student in neuropharmacology, I was one of the only females and the only student from a working-class background, and I was determined somehow to change that,” Brinton says. After meeting a group of promising high school students whose classroom was a trailer in the back lot of a school in East Los Angeles, Brinton founded the USC STAR Program, which she has directed for the past 19 years. The program teaches elementary through high school students and their teachers about science and provides hands-on research opportunities
in labs at USC. 

President Obama Honors Dr. Roberta Diaz Brinton as a Recipient of  the 2010 Presidential Citizens Medal

Roberta Diaz Brinton has devoted her time and talents to improving science and technology education for Los Angeles students. As Director of the University of Southern California’s Science, Technology and Research (STAR) Program, Brinton has opened the doors of opportunity for thousands of disadvantaged and minority inner-city youth. Brinton receives the Citizens Medal for encouraging America’s next generations to reach for the stars. 

USC Receives $56.8 Million National Institutes of Health Award for Clinical and Translational Research

Los Angeles, Calif., July 14, 2010

The USC School of Pharmacy is an academic partner with the Keck School of Medicine of USC in a prestigious $56.8 million Clinical and Translational Science Award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to support and promote scientific discoveries and their application in real-life settings to health and health care. The CTSA will have an important focus on health issues of people living in densely populated urban environments.

The award, which will be distributed over the next five years, was given to the USC-based Los Angeles Basin Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI). CTSI was established in 2006 to connect basic scientists to clinical and community researchers and practitioners with a goal of accelerating the translation of laboratory discoveries into practice. Principal investigator is Thomas A. Buchanan, M.D., director of the Los Angeles Basin CTSI, and associate dean for clinical research at the Keck School of Medicine of USC.

Roberta Diaz Brinton, Ph.D., the R. Pete Vanderveen Chair in Therapeutic Discovery and Development, professor in the Pharmacology and Pharmaceutical Sciences Department at the School of Pharmacy, is director of the CTSI Center for Scientific Translation.

The New York Times Reports on "The Estrogen Dilema"

Monday, April 12, 2010 

Roberta Brinton is a brain scientist. Estrogen, particularly in its relationship to the health of the brain, is her obsession. The problem with the estrogen question in the year 2010 is that you set out one day to ask it in what sounds like a straightforward way — Yes or no? Do I or do I not go on sticking these patches on my back? Is hormone replacement as dangerous in the long term as as people say it is?

Early Casualty, Neurogenesis Cripples Cognition in AD Mice

Friday, March 19, 2010

Roberta Brinton and colleagues at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, report that allopregnanolone, a neurosteroid, revitalizes weak neurogenesis in young triple-transgenic mice and protects them against deficits in hippocampal-based learning and memory. Whether allopregnanolone will benefit older animals with established pathology is unclear at present, but Brinton told ARF that such studies are underway.