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Sleep and Performance Research Center Seminar Series
October 6 at 12:10 pm – 1:00 pm PDT
Presented by Washington State University – Sleep and Performance Research Center
Sleep Disruption, Stress and Risk of Alzheimer’s Disease
October 6, 2026
12:10–1:00 p.m.
SAC 147 and Zoom
Speaker
Michael Sierks, PhD
Professor, Arizona State University – Tempe
Dr. Michael Sierks is a professor of chemical engineering in the School for Engineering of Matter, Transport and Energy at Arizona State University. Sierks’ research interests include antibody-based therapeutics for treating neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzeimer’s and Parkinson’s Diseases. Other areas of interest in the Sierks group include ligand/receptor interactions, catalytic antibodies, and enzyme mechanisms.
Talk Abstract
Although Alzheimer’s disease, AD, is defined pathologically by amyloid plaques and tau tangles, the generation of toxic variants of several neuronal proteins, including amyloid beta, tau, and TDP-43, is increasingly recognized as an early driver of disease progression. We have shown that several key variants of these proteins accumulate in neurons during the early stages of AD and represent promising blood-based biomarkers for early disease detection. We also found that these toxic variants are generated in wild-type mice following either acute stress, induced by mild traumatic brain injury, or chronic stress, induced by sleep disruption. Distinct protein variants were associated with different behavioral outcomes, with pronounced sex-dependent differences. Together, these findings link acute and chronic stress to the generation of toxic protein variants implicated in the early pathogenesis of AD and support their potential utility as biomarkers of disease risk and progression.