Date: Tuesday, October 6, 2026
Time: 1:00 – 2:00 PM
Location: Building 4, Room 5209
By Dr. Samhan Alsolami, Salk institute for biological studies.
An age-preserving neuronal iSpheroid platform for modeling human aging and Alzheimer’s disease
Bio:
Samhan Alsolami’s research focuses on understanding how human aging shapes neuronal function and vulnerability to neurodegenerative disease. His work aims to develop physiologically relevant human models that preserve age-associated features and can be applied at scale to study aging, neurodegeneration, and therapeutic responses. During his doctoral training, he worked on the human cell culture environment, stem cell systems, and embryo models, including blastoids, to investigate early human development. As a postdoctoral fellow in Professor Fred H. Gage’s laboratory at the Salk Institute, he developed iSpheroids, a direct fibroblast-to-neuronal spheroid platform that preserves donor age and enables the study of aging and Alzheimer’s disease across genetically diverse individuals. His research integrates single-cell and bulk transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, lipidomics, epigenetic aging, functional neuronal assays, and therapeutic screening to identify mechanisms of neuronal aging and disease. His ultimate goal is to build scalable, personalized human models that connect aging biology with neurodegeneration and enable the discovery of interventions capable of restoring neuronal function.