Dr. Jessica Young is working on the ADRC funded Pilot Project Probing the role of endocytic network in sporadic AD risk using human induced pluripotent stem cells. She has an interest in determining the molecular and cellular mechanisms behind genetic risk for late-onset sporadic Alzheimer’s disease (SAD), the most common neurodegenerative disorder. Her laboratory's goal is to develop a robust model for SAD in the laboratory using human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs), which capture the genetic background of an individual patient in a dish. The team is currently generating a cohort of SAD patient and control stem cell lines in collaboration with the UW ADRC and interrogating how genetic variants in genes, such as SORLA, that control endosomal trafficking and sorting contribute to SAD risk in human neurons differentiated from hiPSCs. Another focus of her work is engineering cell lines with risk and protective variants using genome-editing technology to test the function of these variants in isogenic cells. Overall, she aims to contribute to basic understanding of neuronal mechanisms that become dysfunctional in SAD as well as open up new avenues to test for therapy development. She has recieved a Young Scientist Award from the company Bio-techne and the Jaconette L. Tietze Young Scientist Research Award through the Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine.
Recent presentations:
September 26, 2016: Cell Symposia: 10 years of iPSCs, Berkeley CA: Using iPSCs to dissect pathways, discover new therapeutics, and develop models for late-onset, sporadic Alzheimer’s disease
November 7, 2016: UW ADRC's Toward Precision Medicine Seminar: Probing cellular mechanisms of sporadic Alzheimer’s disease risk using patient stem cells
November 12, 2016: Society for Neuroscience, San Diego, CA: Retromer complex stabilization reduces pathogenic APP processing and Tau phosphorylation in a hiPSC model of sporadic Alzheimer’s disease
Research Interests
Human induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSCs) models, Alzheimer’s disease risk factors, precision medicine
