Eric Yale Hayden, PhD

Dr. Eric Y. Hayden is an Assistant Project Scientist in the Department of Neurology in the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has a long held curiosity in protein folding and misfolding as it relates to neurodegenerative diseases. His research has examined the biophysical and biochemical properties of amyloid forming proteins, and their oligomeric assemblies. Dr. Hayden’s doctoral work focused on studies of the molecular basis of Parkinson’s disease, examining α-synuclein oligomerization, fibrillation and inhibition. In his postdoctoral work he developed a technique to stabilize large quantities of amyloid β-protein (Aβ) oligomers, the protein that has been implicated as a key neurotoxin in Alzheimer’s disease. He also developed a method to isolate individual oligomers in preparation for structure-activity relationship determination. He has also identified important regions of the Aβ sequence through D-amino acid scanning substitutions, and in collaboration with clinicians, is in the process of biomarker development through studies of the ability of cerebrospinal fluid to inhibit oligomerization. In recent work Dr. Hayden is investigating a mixed dementia mouse model to understand the interplay between stroke and Alzheimer’s disease, and has developed methods to dissociate and isolate stroke affected vs. non-affected neuronal populations from mouse cortex for single cell sequencing to pinpoint genes and pathways responsible for responding to neuronal damage.

He has been recognized for his research through awards including pre-doctoral and post-doctoral training grants from the NIH, the Outstanding Young Alumni Award from The Albany Academies, the 2012 Mazz Prize from the UCLA Department of Neurology, a Rapid Grant Award from the UCLA Claude Pepper Older Americans Independence Center and the UCLA Clinical and Translational Science Institute, and the 2013 Young Investigator Award from the California Southland Chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association, and most recently the 2017 Turken Research Award given by the Sam and Ida Turken Charitable Foundation and the Mary S. Easton Center for Alzheimer’s Disease Research at UCLA.

Dr. Hayden received a Bachelor of Arts in Biology from New York University in 2004, and a M.S. and Ph.D. in Physiology and Biophysics from Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 2007 and 2009 respectively. He performed postdoctoral research with David Teplow, Ph.D. in the Department of Neurology at UCLA, and more recently has worked with Jason Hinman, MD, PhD also in the UCLA Department of Neurology.