Guoyan Zhao, PhD

Assistant Professor of Neuroscience

Washington University in St. Louis (WU)

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Parkinson disease (PD) are the most common neurodegenerative diseases affecting millions of people worldwide. Currently the molecular mechanism of disease pathogenesis remains unclear and there are no therapies can prevent, slow, or halt disease progression. The focus of our lab is on dissecting the molecular mechanism of neurodegeneration through multiple integrated approaches including single nucleus RNA-seq (snRNA-seq), network analysis, genomics, and machine learning. Our long-term goal is to provide novel insights into the mechanism of disease pathogenesis and new targets for disease prevention and drug development. Areas of current interest include: 1) Dissect cellular and transcriptomic changes in AD and PD human brains using snRNA-seq; 2) Understand the relationship between neuroinflammation and selective neuronal death; 3) Computational tool development for single cell ligand-receptor signaling network analysis, transcriptional regulatory network analysis and their application on AD and PD snRNA-seq data.