Melissa Noel

B.S., University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras
Novel Roles for the Tissue
Plasminogen Activator System in the Development of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and the Regulation of Contextual Learning after Stress
presented by Sidney Strickland

Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) is the most prevalent birth defect by a large margin. It occurs when a pregnant woman abuses alcohol during the last trimester. It affects one in 500 births and can cause neuronal loss in the brain and lifelong disabilities. In spite of its prevalence, little is known about why alcohol at this critical time is so damaging to the brain. Melissa Noel studied this syndrome. She used a mouse model of FAS consisting of exposing newborn mice to alcohol. She then showed that the protease tissue plasminogen activator plays a critical role in neuronal death. After alcohol exposure, control mice had massive neuronal death, but newborn mice that lack tPA had only one percent neuronal loss. She has identified a new pathway involved in alcohol-mediated neuronal death and provided new avenues to design therapeutic approaches to alleviate FAS.

Melissa was born and raised in Puerto Rico. She first came to Rockefeller as a summer student in Bruce McEwen’s lab and then returned as a graduate student. Through hard work and intelligence, she has done an extremely important thesis. Melissa epitomizes the growth that one sees in the best students, from her early days as a talented but beginning scientist to a mature investigator with the drive and independence to forge her own path. Melissa is continuing her training as a postdoc at Mount Sinai School of Medicine.