Dr. Rachel Bailey received dual Bachelor of Science degrees in Biology/Bioinformatics and Molecular Biology from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She began her Ph.D. in Neuroscience at the Mayo Clinic and completed it at the University of Florida under the mentorship of Dr. Jada Lewis. Dr. Bailey’s graduate work focused on studying modifiers of tauopathies. She demonstrated that the LRRK2 protein that is linked to Parkinson’s disease directly phosphorylates tau protein at a novel epitope, which is an important step in the neurodegenerative process.
For her postdoctoral fellowship, Dr. Bailey worked in the Gene Therapy Center at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill in the lab of Dr. Steven Gray. She contributed to the preclinical development of an AAV-based gene therapy for the rare pediatric neurodegenerative disorder, Giant Axonal Neuropathy (GAN), which is currently being tested in a Phase I clinical trial that is ongoing at the Clinical Center at the NIH (NCT02362438). Dr. Bailey also characterized autonomic nervous system dysfunction in GAN rodent models and optimized targeting AAV vector to the peripheral nervous system in these models.
Now at UT Southwestern, the research in the Bailey lab focuses on the development of gene therapies for neurological disorders and facilitates the translation of these treatments for use in human. Pediatric disorders that she is working on include SLC13A5 epileptic encephalopathy, Multiple Sulfatase Deficiency, Charcot Marie Tooth disease type 4J and GAN. Dr. Bailey has expanded her gene therapy research efforts beyond monogenic diseases to more complex neurodegenerative disorders, including tauopathies, such as Alzheimer’s disease. Her lab utilizes AAV vector engineering for both gene replacement and gene-silencing approaches, explores alternative methods of virus delivery, performs proof-of-concept studies in cell culture models, and performs IND-enabling studies in animal models for translation of treatments to the clinic.