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Faculty headshot of Jessica Young, PhD

Jessica E. Young PhD

Laboratory Medicine and Pathology
Associate Professor

Email: jeyoung@uw.edu | Phone: 206.685.1568


Our lab aims to understand cellular mechanisms that drive Alzheimer’s disease pathogenesis using human stem cell models. Alzheimer’s disease is a devastating neurodegenerative disorder for which no treatment currently halts disease progression. Human neurons derived from patients and controls allow the interrogation of genetic risk for AD and elucidation of affected biological pathways in a disease-relevant cell type. Our team is currently pursuing several avenues of investigation. 1) We are investigating AD-associated risk variants in genes regulating endocytic trafficking. 2) We are studying epigenetic factors that affect human neuronal maturation and aging and which are dysregulated in AD. 3) We are building a cohort of autopsy confirmed AD patient stem cell lines to investigate varying genetic backgrounds for cellular AD phenotypes. The end goal of our research is to define novel pathways for therapeutic development in AD and analysis using stem cell derived neurons.