Shaun Sanders

Biography: Dr. Sanders completed her BSc in Biology at the University of British Columbia during which she worked on developing strategies for delivery of therapeutics across the blood brain barrier in Sandhoff and Tay-Sachs diseases. She then went on to complete her PhD in Neuroscience in Dr. Michael Hayden’s lab, also at the University of British Columbia, researching the adult-onset neurodegenerative disease, Huntington disease (HD). There, she became fascinated with how the protein-lipid modification known as palmitoylation regulates protein trafficking in neurons and how that goes wrong in neurological disorders. During her PhD she identified the Huntingtin palmitoylating enzyme ZDHHC17 as an essential protein crucial for neuronal integrity. This led her to a postdoctoral fellowship supported by the Brody Foundation Medical Trust Fund in the lab of Dr. Gareth Thomas at Temple University in Philadelphia. During her PDF she combined biochemical and cell biological studies with viral-mediated approaches in neurons to identify a new role for palmitoylation in targeting voltage-gated potassium ion channels to the neuronal axon initial segment, the site of action potential initiation, and subsequently regulating neuronal excitability. She then joined the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at the University of Guelph June 2020 as an Assistant.

Professor. Dr. Sanders has been recognized with multiple scholarships and fellowships including from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (MSc, PhD, PDF) and, notably, the highly competitive Brody Family Medical Trust Fund Fellowship from the Philadelphia Foundation, which awards only 2 fellowships a year in the Philadelphia area. Dr. Sanders’ 39 publications in top-notch journals (e.g., eLife and Cell Reports) at such an early stage in her career, combined with over $1.3 million in research funds and prestigious awards such as the Azrieli Future Leaders in Canadian Brain Research position her as a leader within the fields of protein lipidation and neuroscience globally.

Her group at the University of Guelph uses cutting-edge genetic, biochemical, and cell biological approaches to understand how neurons use palmitoylation to target proteins to specific subcellular locations and to define how palmitoylation-dependent targeting contributes to physiological neuronal function and neuropathological conditions.

https://sanderslab.uoguelph.ca/