Leslie Thompson

Leslie M. Thompson, PhD, is a Bren Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Human Behavior and Neurobiology and Behavior and Co-Director of the Sue and Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center at the UC Irvine. She was a member of the international consortium that identified the Huntington’s disease (HD) gene in 1993. Her laboratory investigates RNA, molecular, and cellular mechanisms by which expanded CAG repeats drive neurodegeneration, with the goal of developing disease-modifying therapies, including gene- and cell-based approaches. She also studies XDP and ALSr. Thompson is an AAAS Fellow, founding Co–Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Huntington’s Disease, Chair of the Huntington’s Disease Foundation SAB and a member of the Johns Hopkins Packard Center for ALS SAB.