Timothy Richardson, PhD, found his two passions early on in his career as a researcher.
He’d always been interested in the first: learning how cells work, which led to him majoring in biochemistry at the University of Minnesota. Since plant biology was his favorite class and he isolated chlorophyll from green algae as an undergraduate student, Richardson thought he’d go on to study photosynthesis as a career path.
Then, in graduate school, he found that second passion: building molecules from scratch in the lab setting, while studying organic synthesis.
Now, years later, Richardson applies those two passions as a research professor of medicine at the Indiana University School of Medicine and in his leadership role in the TREAT-AD drug discovery center. The IU School of Medicine-Purdue University Target Enablement to Accelerate Therapy Development for Alzheimer’s Disease (TREAT-AD) Center aims to identify promising Alzheimer’s drug targets and help speed up further research into new treatments for the disease.
“Having that interest in how cells work and then being able to build molecules that can specifically manipulate targets in cells to understand how they work, it’s the combination of biology and chemistry that got me where I am today,” Richardson said.
Prior to joining the IU School of Medicine in 2020, Richardson was a Research Fellow at Eli Lilly and Co. He was recruited to join the TREAT-AD Center by Alan Palkowitz, PhD, a research professor of medicine at the IU School of Medicine. The center, under the leadership of Palkowitz and Bruce T. Lamb, PhD, executive director of the Stark Neurosciences Research Institute, received its initial grant funding from the National Institutes of Health in 2019.
“Tim has been a great colleague and co-leader of the TREAT-AD program,” Palkowitz said. “He is a highly skilled drug hunter with the scientific courage and discipline to take on very difficult challenges and an inclusive approach that finds solutions through the diverse contributions of team members. Given the ambitious goals and multidisciplinary structure of the program, Tim’s style and leadership has been a key contributor to success.”
Richardson said joining the IU School of Medicine gave him the chance to do the kind of basic science research he enjoys, in ways that he missed in his previous role. “There’s a lot of difficult problems, unknown problems, and you have much more freedom in an academic setting to research those new, unexplored areas,” Richardson said.
Additionally, he noted the opportunity to work alongside renowned Alzheimer’s disease researchers like Lamb, Andrew J. Saykin, PsyD, and Tatiana Foroud, PhD, was too good to pass up. His role with TREAT-AD allows him to do just that. Richardson focuses on accomplishing the TREAT-AD Center’s scientific goals by guiding trainees and staff members researching the biological factors behind Alzheimer’s disease, while seeking new ways to design and optimize drug-like molecules that can be used to treat it.
Part of Richardson’s role also includes helping facilitate access to TREAT-AD's data. As an open science consortium, all data collected, and tools used by the center, are publicly available.
The center’s recent work includes research into a protein, called SHIP1, which is expressed in microglia, a type of cell in the central nervous system located throughout the brain and spinal cord. Proteins involved with microglial function, like SHIP1, are associated with the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.
Inhibiting SHIP1 is hypothesized to have therapeutic benefits which could lead to a more resilient brain while slowing the rate of cognitive decline in Alzheimer’s disease patients, Richardson said. The TREAT‐AD Center has evaluated inhibitors for SHIP1, which has yielded positive initial results that justify further study for potential drug development. Richardson is continuing this work in collaboration with Adrian Oblak, PhD, an associate professor at the IU School of Medicine, who discovered that the gene INPP5D which encodes SHIP1, is overexpressed in humans with Alzheimer’s.
Richardson is proud of the work being done at the TREAT-AD Center but stressed that it wouldn’t be possible without the faculty he’s able to collaborate with the IU School of Medicine.
“Being at IU, particularly in this area of research, I have a lot of really great colleagues,” Richardson said. “Having great collaborators is really important for a successful drug discovery project."
