Dr. Mari DeMarco is a Clinical Chemist at St Paul's Hospital, the Research Director for Providence Health Care, and a Clinical Professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.

As part of her PhD thesis, Dr. DeMarco explored protein misfolding pathways and focused on the pathological mechanisms (misfolding, aggregation and replication) in human prion diseases. This interest in amyloidosis and neurodegeneration carried over to her clinical work, where she leads the development and implementation of new diagnostics for neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer's disease, frontotemporal dementia, Parkinson's disease and dementia with Lewy bodies.

Reflecting her research group’s accomplishments and those of the incredible staff working in Clinical Chemistry Lab at St. Paul’s Hospital, Dr. DeMarco is the recipient of the University of British Columbia’s Early Career Excellence in Research and Discovery, the American Association of Clinical Chemist’s Outstanding Scientific Achievements by a Young Investigator award, MSACL’s Bereman Award for Innovative Clinical Proteomics and the Award for Research Excellence from the Canadian Society of Clinical Chemists.

Academic Background

• BSc Honors, Biochemistry (major), Mathematics (minor), Mercyhurst University

• PhD, Department of Medicinal Chemistry, Biomolecular Structure and Design Program, University of Washington

• Clinical Chemistry Fellowship, Washington University School of Medicine

  
  

Publications

For a complete list of publications visit: https://www.demarcolab.ca/publications 

Selected publications:

Forgrave LM, Moon K, Hamden J, Li Y, Lu P, Foster LJ, Mackenzie IRA, DeMarco ML. Truncated TDP-43 proteoforms diagnostic of frontotemporal dementia with TDP-43 pathology. Alzheimer's & Dementia. 2023; in press.

Chang A, et al. Homotypic fibrillization of TMEM106B across diverse neurodegenerative diseases. Cell. 2022;185(8):1346-1355.

Delaby C, … DeMarco ML, … Lehmann S. Clinical reporting following the quantification of cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers in Alzheimer's disease: An international overview. Alzheimer's & Dementia. 2022;18(10):18-79.

Best JR, Wang M, Lee T, Russell JA, DeMarco ML. Early increases in anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibody isotypes associated with organ dysfunction and mortality in patients hospitalized with COVID-19. Intensive Care Medicine. 2022;48(5):616–618.

Forgrave LM, van der Gugten JG, Nguyen Q, DeMarco ML. Establishing pre-analytical requirements and maximizing peptide recovery in the analytical phase for mass spectrometric quantification of amyloid-ß peptides 1-42 and 1-40 in CSF. Clinical Chemistry & Laboratory Medicine. 2022;60(2):198-206.

Forgrave LM, Wang M, Yang D, DeMarco ML. Proteoforms and their expanding role in laboratory medicine. Practical Laboratory Medicine. 2021;e00260.

Quantitative Measurement of Proteins and Peptides by Mass Spectrometry. 1st ed. CLSI guideline C64. Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute; 2021; ISBN 978-1-68440-110-9.

Research Lab Website

DeMarco Lab website: https://www.demarcolab.ca