Susan L. Cotman, Ph.D., is an Instructor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School and Assistant in Neuroscience at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Cotman graduated from The Ohio State University in 1993 and received her Ph.D. from the Biochemistry Program at the same institution in 1999, for her work involving the heparan sulfate proteoglycan, agrin, and its role in amyloid plaque formation in Alzheimer’s disease.
Dr. Cotman’s current research interests focus on the neurodegenerative disorder, juvenile neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis (JNCL; Batten disease), caused by recessive inheritance of CLN3 mutations, resulting in childhood onset of blindness, seizures, cognitive and motor decline, and premature death. As a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Marcy MacDonald’s laboratory at Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. Cotman established and characterized genetically accurate mouse and neuronal culture models of JNCL. Dr. Cotman is currently utilizing these models of JNCL, along with mouse and neuronal culture models of other related forms of NCL, such as variant late infantile NCL caused by CLN6 mutations, to investigate the role of autophagy and membrane trafficking in NCL disease. Other ongoing projects aim to characterize the CLN3 and CLN6 protein functions, as they relate to NCL disease.
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