Jennifer Yokoyama
University of California-San Francisco, CA·Genetics
Alzheimer's disease (AD) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD) run in families more than known genes can explain. Researchers have found single-gene mutations, common risk factors and rare risk variants, yet much of the inherited risk for these diseases is still unexplained.
- Fields
Genetics
Neuroscience
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
frontotemporal dementia
Alzheimer's disease
neurodegenerative disease
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Apr 2028
What they work on
- Collect and bank DNA and RNA from the full program cohort and test participants for known dementia-causing mutations and risk variants with traditional and next-generation sequencing.
- Expand genetic screening with whole exome sequencing to find disease genes, genome-wide SNP arrays for population mapping, and fragment analysis to detect trinucleotide repeat expansions.
- Generate transcriptomic data for the program's molecular biomarker project and integrate genetic data with clinical, imaging, biomarker and neuropathology studies through a shared informatics platform.
More about the research
This suggests that more genetic risk factors remain to be found. Because genetics is so basic to the causes and biology of FTD, a shared genetics resource supports every project in a larger multi-project research program on neurodegenerative disease.
Why it matters
Finding the unexplained genetic risk factors for Alzheimer's disease and frontotemporal dementia could clarify what causes these conditions. Genetic testing for known causes and integrated genetic, clinical, imaging and biomarker data could help researchers understand how dementia develops in affected patients and families, and could inform the search for molecular biomarkers.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Jovanny Zabaleta
Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center-New Orleans, LA·Genetics
Provide next-generation sequencing services, including whole transcriptome and RNA sequencing, whole exome sequencing, and array-based DNA methylation and SNP analysis, to cancer research project leaders.
Jingjing Liang
University of Arizona, AZ·Neuroscience
Test how Aggregatin, a protein encoded by the Alzheimer's-linked gene FAM222A, controls TDP-43 clumping and toxicity in neurons, using Aggregatin knockout models.
Suzanne M Leal
Columbia University, NY·Genetics
Develop and release Tractor-RVA, open-source software that tests rare genetic variants by ancestry in people of mixed ancestry, and apply it to African-ancestry and Latino participants.
The school
University of California-San Francisco: 89 labs on PI Pages, $2.1B a year on research, 164 research doctorates a year.
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