# Saranna Fanning Assistant Professor ![Saranna Fanning](/sites/g/files/omnuum5476/files/styles/hwp_4_5__480x600/public/2025-09/Saranna%20Fanning%205.jpg?itok=A9-QZD97) email laptop\_windows [Lab Website](https://fanninglab.bwh.harvard.edu/) laptop\_windows [Publications](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/myncbi/1F3EzzeAiOPEpe/bibliography/public/) The Fanning lab is focused on the role of the metablome in neurodegenerative diseases including Parkinson's disease (PD), Lewy body Dementia (LBD), and other synucleinopathies. Our research is motivated by the huge unmet medical need for mechanism-based treatments for these complex diseases. We focus on mechanistic understanding of disease, integrating genetic and pharmacological approaches in multiple cellular systems, patient-derived neurons, and other models of disease with the goal of identifying novel targets for therapeutic intervention. Despite the brain being unusually lipid rich, the role of lipid equilibrium in neurodegeneration remains largely unresolved. The Fanning lab focuses on studying the intersections of lipid/fatty acid metabolism, genetic variation, and protein conformation of the disease associated protein alpha-synuclein (aS). Our initial lipidomic mechanistic studies utilized a yeast model of aS toxicity in which lipid biosynthesis and regulation are well understood and highly conserved with higher eukaryotes. This progressed to neuroblastoma models, rat primary cortical neurons, human iPSC-derived neurons, and patient-derived neurons, unveiling the importance of neutral lipids, phospholipids and fatty acids in cytotoxicity, protein conformation and membrane trafficking phenotypes arising from excess aS and familial PD/LBD mutations. This work led to the identification of stearoyl CoA desaturase (SCD) as a candidate therapeutic target for PD, inhibition of which reversed disease-relevant phenotypes in patient-derived iPSC neurons and preclinical mouse models. An inhibitor of this novel target entered human clinical (PD) trials. The lab progressed this research identifying hormone sensitive lipase (LIPE) as a candidate target, distinct o that of SCD in targeting lipid degradation instead of synthesis. This was advanced to defining a new therapeutic strategy for co-regulation of lipid synthesis and degradation pathways. The lab now focuses on advancing findings to include metabolites and intermediates of lipid signaling pathways, employing inducible neuronal models, patient-derived iPSC lines, other patient samples and preclinical in vivo models. - ## Location [Brigham and Women's Hospital](/location/brigham-and-womens-hospital) - ## Research Interests [Cell Biology of Neurons & Glia](/research-interests/cell-biology-neurons-glia) [Neuropathology & Disease](/research-interests/neuropathology-disease) - ## Research Techniques [Behavioral](/research-technique/behavioral) [Biochemical/Protein Chemistry](/research-technique/biochemicalprotein-chemistry) [Imaging (microscopic and/or functional)](/research-technique/imaging-microscopic-andor-functional) [Molecular Biological and Genetic](/research-technique/molecular-biological-and-genetic) [Neuronal Tissue and Cell Culture](/research-technique/neuronal-tissue-and-cell-culture) - ## People [Faculty](/people/faculty)