Biography

Dr. Edward Fon is a neurologist-scientist at the Montreal Neurological Institute-Hospital (The Neuro) specializing in movement disorders and a Professor in the Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery at McGill University. He is the Director of the FRQS Quebec Parkinson Network (http://rpq-qpn.ca/en/) and the Scientific Director of The Neuro. He was trained at the Université de Montréal, McGill University and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). His research focuses on the molecular and cellular events leading to Parkinson's disease (PD). His laboratory has made contributions to understanding the function and cell biology of PD genes and in understanding how defects in these genes lead to PD. In particular, they have focused on understanding the function of Parkin, PINK1, α-synuclein, GBA, LRRK2, TMEM175 and DJ-1. He has established the infrastructure at The Neuro to study these genes and pathways in human patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), which they differentiate into neurons, glia and 3D brain organoids. They are currently using these iPSC systems to establish a pipeline to better understand the role of lesser-studied PD genes, identified in recent genome-wide association studies (GWAS), in PD pathogenesis. In addition, he helped establish the Tanenbaum Open Science Institute (TOSI) at The Neuro (https://www.mcgill.ca/neuro/open-science) and oversee its platforms including the Clinical Biological Imaging and Genetic repository (C-BIGr) and iPSC/CRISPR Early Drug Discovery Unit (EDDU).