Jennifer Yokoyama
University of Pennsylvania, PA·Medicine & Clinical Research
Finding treatments and prevention strategies for Alzheimer's disease depends on trials that enroll people from every population and on giving each participant an accurate diagnosis. Blood tests that pick up molecular signs of Alzheimer's-related brain damage offer an accessible route to diagnosing the disease earlier.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Public Health & Epidemiology
Neuroscience
- Topics
Alzheimer's disease
dementia
plasma biomarkers
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2028
What they work on
- Establish ASAC-specific diagnostic cutoffs for four plasma Alzheimer's biomarkers: Aβ42/40 and Tau-181 (markers of Alzheimer's protein pathology), neurofilament light (nerve fiber injury), and GFAP (astrocyte activation), using samples from the multi-center ACAD cohort.
- Determine which non-genetic factors shape Alzheimer's risk in ASAC, including education, immigration history, acculturation level, physical and leisure activity, diet, and psychosocial stress.
- Test whether these non-genetic factors moderate the link between genetic risk and Alzheimer's disease in ASAC, integrating the results with the genetic analyses carried out in the program's Project 1.
More about the research
Separately, researchers estimate that 40 to 50 percent of dementia cases could be prevented by changing modifiable risk factors. Almost all of the supporting evidence, however, comes from people of European ancestry, and it is unclear whether the same biomarker cutoffs or the same risk factors apply to Asians living in North America, the group this project abbreviates as ASAC.
Why it matters
Alzheimer's blood tests calibrated for Asian populations in North America could cut misdiagnosis and let clinicians and trialists identify at-risk individuals sooner. Knowing which modifiable exposures, such as diet, activity, education, or stress, carry the most weight in this group would give a concrete basis for designing prevention trials in a community that current risk models were not built for.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Puja Agarwal
Rush University, IL·Public Health & Epidemiology
Examine whether long-term diet, nutrients and flavonoids relate to activated microglia, the brain's immune cells, in the hippocampus and mid-frontal cortex of autopsied brains from community cohorts of older adults.
Holly Elser
University of Pennsylvania, PA·Public Health & Epidemiology·Early-career
Estimate how the level and duration of long-term PM2.5 exposure affect blood biomarkers of Alzheimer's pathology and brain injury (Aβ42/40, pTau217, GFAP, NfL) in the Penn ADRC cohort, using g-computation, a causal inference method.
Joseph Quinn
Oregon Health & Science University, OR·Neuroscience
Collect and provide DNA, plasma, peripheral blood mononuclear cells and cerebrospinal fluid from healthy controls, people with mild cognitive impairment and people with Alzheimer's disease and related dementias.
The school
University of Pennsylvania: 90 labs on PI Pages, $2.2B a year on research, 750 research doctorates a year.
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