- 5/21/2026: Dr. Pan is in Seville, Spain, presenting at the Dopamine society meeting. Nirmal has made great progress in establishing the Synj1–> VPS35 signaling in dopamine release. Our updated preprint can be found here: https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-9695405/v1
- 5/15/2026: The Pan lab received an R21 award from the National Institutes on Aging to investigate the role of Synj1 in aging dependent motor decline. We believe in the role of dopamine and we hope to bring it back.
- 4/20/2026: Dr. Pan is at St. Charles, MO for Society for Neurochemistry meeting. She is charing a session on “Synaptic Endocytic Genes in Parkinson’s disease”.
- 12/9/2025: Dr. Pan is attending and presenting at 2025 American Society for Cell Bio in Philly.
- 12/4/2025: We are almost at the end of the year! Despite uncertainties at the government level, there is a lot to celebrate as a lab: Justin Cai, the dedicated research assistant for the past two years has received two medical school offer letters. He is one step closer to his dream of becoming Dr. Cai! Our fantastic undergrad, Shlok Nayak, is wrapping up his final pieces of experiment and data analysis. It’s really sad to see him leave but we wish him a bright future! Our manuscript on Synj1 and VPS35 cooperation in presynaptic sorting is out as a preprint. Please see: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41282234/
- 09/08/2025: Dr. Pan is presenting Nirmal’s latest research progress at the Grand Challenges in Parkinson’s Disease Symposium, Grand Rapids, MI
- 7/29/2025: Shlok has been accepted to the MD program at NJMS on early decision! He is the 4th alumnus from the Pan lab (following Hassaam, Meha, and Amina) to join the same program. Very proud of him and hope he continues to explore the forefronts of medical science as a future physician.
- 05/30/2025: Nirmal got a prestigious postdoc fellowship from the American’s Parkinson’s Disease Association! Way to go!
- 11/14/2024: Dr. Pan is visiting colleagues and friends at the Max Plank Florida Institute in Jupiter, FL.
- 11/08/2024: Today is a big day for Jackie and for the Pan lab. After 6 years of hard work, Jackie successfully defended her PhD thesis: Parkinson’s Disease Gene, Synaptojanin1, Regulates Dopamine Neuron Function. We appreciate the Jackie’s committee members, Drs. Runnels, Zhang, Crockett, and Barker as well as other essential supporters: Drs. Alder, Langer and Dreyfus to help make this happen.
- 10/29/2024: Dr. Pan is presenting Jackie’s recent work at the International Transmembrane Transporter Society meeting in Bethesda.
- 08/08/2024: Jackie’s PhD thesis work is published online today at npj Parkinson’s Disease!! It’s been an incredible journey from her initial finding of a somewhat controversial result (Synaptojanin 1 prevents DAT from endocytosis, for which I thought she was absolutely wrong) to today’s full publication on a well respected journal with in vitro and in vivo supporting data. Well done, Jackie! Please check this out https://doi.org/10.1038/s41531-024-00769-0
- 08/02/2024: SURP student Lily Seemann spent 10 weeks in the lab this summer working on immunohistochemistry analysis of our new mouse model. She’s done a ton of work all by herself and got really interesting data. Very proud of Lily!
- 7/10/2024: In collaboration with Jennifer Mejaes and David Barker in the department of psychiatry, we have been investigating the role of Synaptojanin1 in mesolimbic dopamine signaling and reward processing. Our work went online today at Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience! https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2024.1359225
- 06/30/2024: Elnaz has been an great scientist and wonderful organizer of the Pan lab for two years. She is leaving in July to join her family in New Hampshire. It’s sad to see her go, but we wish her good luck!
- 01/30/2024: Elnaz and Jackie are presenting their latest work in Colorado! #WCBR#
- 12/12/2023: Sanjana has successfully defended her master’s thesis today! She has been an invaluable member of the lab and we wish her the best in the pharmaceutical world!
- 11/13/2023: Dr. Pan is presenting at SfN nanosymposium on catecholamines and purines. We have new findings on the molecular ruling of dopamine transporter trafficking that is significant in Parkinson’s disease.
- 5/20/2023: It’s the graduation season again – this time we celebrate Sanjana and Oscar! Sanjana has been a dedicated research assistant and a wonderful master student in the Molecular Biosciences program. She has become an expert in molecular engineering and is now pursuing a career in the industry. Oscar has been an outstanding undergraduate researcher in the lab for over 2 years. He wants to be an orthopedic surgeon! Let’s wish them dreams come true!
- 5/03/2023: Xinyu has made interesting findings on how Synaptojanin1 can alter the endolysosomal parameters in cultured midbrain neurons. Impairment neuronal degradation machineries has been implicated in Parkinson’s disease pathogenesis. This is the first demonstration that Synaptojanin1 can also regulate the lysosomes! Our work is now online at eNeuro. Please check it out!
- 1/20/2023: Xinyu has been a wonderful member since the launch of the lab. He is now accepting an offer from a pharmaceutical company in Shanghai, where he will continue his pursuit in understanding Parkinson’s disease. It’s hard to say good bye, but we wish him the very best wherever he goes!
- 12/12/2022: Jackie won the BHI travel award to attend Winter Conference on Brain Research in Colorado this year!
- 12/07/2022: Our manuscript titled “Cocaine-regulated trafficking of dopamine transporters in cultured neurons revealed by a pH sensitive reporter” is accepted at iScience! Kudos to Jackie and everyone else involved in developing and testing the sensor!
- 11/12/2022: Xinyu is attending SfN at San Diego this year. He will be presenting his poster “Synaptojanin1 regulates lysosomal functions in ventral midbrain neurons”.
- 05/18/2022: Research assistant, Jessica Lee joins the lab! Jessica has recently graduated from the Rutgers University with a major in Cell Biology and Neuroscience and a minor in Psychology. She also has a strong interest in computational biology. Welcome to our lab!
- 05/16/2022: Postdoc fellow, Elnaz Khezerlou joins the lab! Elnaz received her PhD from Louisiana Tech University with past research experience in astrocyte calcium imaging. Elnaz has big dreams in the academic research field. Welcome to the Pan lab!
- 05/06/2022: Meha Aggarwal has successfully defended her Honor’s thesis and received the prestigious Henry Rutgers Scholar Award for her excellence in independent research she conducted as an undergraduate researcher! Congratulations! Meha has received tremendous guidance from the graduate student Jackie – so a big thumbs-up for Jackie as well!
- 10/13/2021: Two talented undergraduate students, Hassaam (now a medical student at NJMS) and Meha have written and edited a review article titled “Synaptojanin1 and its Implications in Membrane Trafficking”. It is now accepted at Neuroscience Letters. It has been a great learning experience for both of them and they truly did a fantastic job! doi: 10.1016/j.neulet.2021.136288
- 9/3/2021: Rutgers Honor’s College students, Oscar Yao and Meha Aggarwal will be carrying out their undergraduate research in the lab this semester.
- 08/17/2021: Welcome our new research assistants: Sanjana and Arianna! Sanjana is a currently a Master student in the Rutgers Biomedical Sciences Program; and Arianna is a recent college graduate from Rutgers University majoring in Biological Science.
- 06/30/2021: Our new work on Synj1 and astrocyte autophagy is published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. We found that the neuronal synapse-enriched protein, Synaptojanin1 is also expressed in astrocytes and it represses basal autophagosome formation. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbc.2021.100873
- 05/14/2021: Congratulations to Meha on receiving the Johnson & Johnson Women in STEM2D Life Sciences Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship!
- 03/19/2021: Our lab meeting/Journal club is going back to a bi-weekly schedule that happens every other Wednesday at noon. It will remain virtual until further notice.
- 03/12/2021: Asma was selected to present our most recent work “Synj1 deficiency upregulates autophagosome formation in astrocytes” at the Virtual Glia Trainee Symposium. Great job!
- 09/1/2020: Exciting news-Hassaam has received an early admission to the NJMS! He is one of the few to be accepted into the Joint Bachelor/Medical Degree Program between Rutgers University and New Jersey Medical School. Really proud of you!
- 07/01/2020: Welcome our new Research Assistant, Asma Rizvi, joining the lab today!
- 07/01/2020: Congratulations to Jackie on passing the qualification exam and for receiving a Diversity Supplement from the NINDS!
- 05/25/2020: Welcome new Honor’s College students, Meha Aggarwal and Oscar Yao, join the lab!
- 05/01/2020: Dr. Pan’s lab has published a new article titled “Synj1 Haploinsufficiency Causes Dopamine Neuron Vulnerability and alpha-synuclein Accumulation in Mice” on Human Molecular Genetics.
- 04/27/2020: Pan lab started a weekly Journal Club discussion on WebEx. Please email: [email protected] if you wish to join us!
- 03/30/2020: Due to COVID impact, lab meetings are going WebEx at 11 a.m. every Monday morning.
- 01/28/2020: Dr. Pan received a new grant from the Brain Health Institute to study genetic predisposition to cocaine tolerance. This is a collaboration with Dr. David Barker’s lab in the Psychiatry department.
- 11/8/2019: Dr. Pan has a new publication on multiscale transcriptomic networks analysis for identification of key regulators in Parkinson’s disease.
- 11/8/2019: Dr. Pan has received an NIH R01 grant to study the role of SYNJ1 in basal ganglia signaling – Featured in Dean’s weekly view.
- 10/9/2019: Bi-weekly Lab meeting is scheduled @ 12 pm on Monday at RT 3rd floor conference room.
- 8/5/2019: SURP student Hikari has successfully finished her summer research program and off to a new start!
- 7/1/2019: Dr. Pan received the Feldstein Medical Foundation Award to study the protective signaling of nicotine in Parkinson’s disease models.
- 5/29/2019: NIH-funded SURP student Hikari Tanaka joins the lab. She will stay till the beginning of August for a small project on astrocytes.
- 5/24/2019: Jackie has decided to carry out her thesis work in our lab. We wish her success!
- 4/1/2019: We welcome Molecular Bioscience rotation student, Jacqueline Saenz, joins the lab!
- 1/28/2019: Welcome postdoc fellow, Xinyu Zhu, joins the lab. Xinyu obtained his PhD degree in biophysics from a joint program of Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences & Huazhong University of Science and Technology. He studied endocytic membrane trafficking using optical tools.
- 1/7/2019: Welcome Intern / Research Assistant, Justin Zhu, joins the lab! Justin is a recent graduate from NYU and is taking a gap year in our lab.
- 12/3/2018: Welcome our first rotation student from the Molecular Bioscience program, Kyle Nunn, joins the lab!
