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René Frank, Ph.D.

Associate Professor and UKRI Future Leader Fellow, University of Leeds, UK

Dr. René Frank is a structural neuroscientist with expertise in cryo-electron tomography, correlative bioimaging, mouse genetics, Alzheimer’s disease and synapse biology. He completed his Ph.D. under Dr.Richard Perham at the University of Cambridge in the UK. In 2006, he switched fields to work on the macromolecular assembly of glutamatergic synapses before becoming a postdoctoral staff scientist at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, developing methods using cryo-electron microscopy to investigate the native, in situ molecular structure of the mammalian brain. In 2018, he founded an independent research group at the Astbury Centre at the University of Leeds.

Dr. Frank is currently an Associate Professor and UKRI Future Leader Fellow and he has pioneered in-tissue structural biology, resulting in several recent breakthroughs. Using mouse genetics and cryo-electron tomography, he determined the first in-tissue molecular architecture of adult brain synapses. Dr. Frank obtained the first in-tissue molecular architecture of amyloid beta within a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease-like plaque pathology. He also determined the in-tissue molecular architecture of amyloid beta plaques and tau tangles within postmortem AD brain, resulting in the first ever structure of a protein within tissue.

Related Research:

Alzheimer’s Disease Tau Consortium: Post-Translational Modifications and Tau Ultrastructure; Impact of Amyloid Beta on Tau In Vivo Karen Duff René Frank 2024-12-23

Funded Research

These projects were made possible from Cure Alzheimer's Fund support.

Project Description Researchers Funding
Alzheimer’s Disease Tau Consortium: Post-Translational Modifications and Tau Ultrastructure; Impact of Amyloid Beta on Tau In Vivo 2024

$366,770

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