Functional Genomics Approach to Neuronal-Glial Mechanisms in Neurodegenerative Dementias

Join UCI MIND for an in-person seminar featuring Jessica Rexach, M.D., Ph.D.

Jessica Rexach, MD, PhD

Dr. Rexach is an Assistant Professor and board certified neurologist at University of California Los Angeles. She currently holds the John Douglas French Alzheimer’s Foundation Endowed chair. Dr. Rexach studies how molecules of the immune system contribute to neurodegenerative disease. Different neurodegenerative dementias have different causal genes, suggesting they result from distinct causal mechanisms. This includes glial and immune genes, whose roles in the CNS are unclear. In this talk, Dr. Rexach will highlight her recent ongoing works with the tools of functional genomics and how her lab leverages dementia genetics and genome-wide molecular disease phenotypes to generate unbiased, data-driven models of neural-glial mechanisms of disease.  Dr. Rexach and her team use experimental systems, including iPSC-derived spheroids and glia, to test data-driven hypotheses in order to advance disease mechanisms and identify candidate drug targets.

For questions, contact vswarup@uci.edu and bmander@hs.uci.edu