Contact:
ph (847) 578-8541 fax (847) 578-8515
robert.marr@rosalindfranklin.edu


  
 

Biography: 
Dr Marr received his undergraduate degree in applied biochemistry from the University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada. Afterwards he did his graduate work in the laboratory of Dr. Frank Graham at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada where he worked on gene therapy for cancer. After receiving his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology Genetics and Cancer from McMaster he moved to the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla California. There his work in the laboratory of Dr. Inder Verma was primarily on the application of gene transfer technology to the study and treatment of Alzheimer’s disease.

Dr. Marr has received funding from the Medical Research Council of Canada (1998) and from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (2000).
He has been awarded the Lee Nielson Roth Award for Cancer Research from McMaster University (1997), and the Excellence in Research Award from the American Society for Gene Therapy (2003).  While at Rosalind Franklin University, he has received a Schweppe Foundation Carrier Development Award (2007),

a New Investigator Research Grant from the Alzheimer's Association (2008), and a grant from the Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation (2009). 

Research Interests:
The overlying area of Dr. Marr’s interests lay in the study of neurodegenerative diseases. More specifically his focus is on Alzheimer’s disease and the use of gene transfer vectors as a tool to investigate specific gene function(s) in the brain as it relates to Alzheimer’s. The derivation of potentially new therapeutic approaches to Alzheimer’s disease is also an area of focus for Dr. Marr. Currently he is investigating the mechanism by which apolipoprotein E receptors and endopeptidases like neprilysin-2 act to modulate pathology in this disease.