Young-Pearse Lab

10/15/2025

We are excited to share our latest publication , "Genetic and proteomic analysis identifies BAG3 as an amyloid‑responsive regulator of neuronal proteostasis" which was published in Acta Neuropathologica this week! Congratulations to lead author Zach Augur, who will be defending his thesis later this week.

09/29/2025

Welcome to the lab Fasih Ahsan! Fasih is a genomic computational biologist who graduated from Harvard's BBS program and joined our lab in the fall of 2025. He is interested in using integrated computational approaches to help discover biological and clinical insights from large scale multi-omics data sets.

09/15/2025

Welcome to the lab Anna Cramer and Anna Curle! Team Annas are working on an exciting project using human induced pluripotent stem cells from diverse genetic backgrounds to investigate heterogeneity of disease and response to therapies in Alzheimer’s disease. Anna Curle is a postdoctoral fellow coming to us from the University of Cambridge, and is leading this effort. Anna Cramer is a research technician coming to us from the University of Washington who joined us in the summer.

09/09/2025

We have a strong and long standing relationship with the Rush Alzheimer's Disease Center and the powerful ROS and MAP cohorts that Dr. David Bennett established several decades ago. We are so grateful for our past and continued collaborative projects with them, and also for their strong support of the next generation of researchers aiming to end Alzheimer's disease and related disorders! Last spring, the RADC presented Dr. Sarah Heuer of our lab with the Martha Ondrey Postdoctoral Prize for her exciting research that leverages human cell models to elucidate how polygenic risk for Alzheimer's affects cellular state transitions and communications. Congratulations Sarah!

09/03/2025

Congratulations to Zach Augur, Garrett Fogo and the team on their publication, "Optineurin deficiency disrupts phosphorylated tau proteostasis and clusterin expression in human neurons" published today in Acta Neuropathologica Communications! This is the first of a set of three studies that encompass Zach's PhD thesis.
https://rdcu.be/eDMPB

08/25/2025

Best of luck today to Alex on her first day at Novartis! We will miss her greatly but look forward to seeing all of the fabulous things she accomplishes in her new scientific endeavors!

06/23/2025

I was deeply honored to receive the A. Clifford Barger Award for Excellence in Mentoring from Harvard Medical School this month. Thank you to all my past and present mentees and faculty who nominated me! I am incredibly fortunate to have the opportunity to mentor such wonderful trainees!

06/10/2025

We are excited about this new study from our lab in Cell Reports, led by Alex Lish and Nancy Ashour. It establishes a robust triple culture system of human iPSC-derived neurons, astrocytes and microglia, and reveals ways in which these cells affect the basal state of one another.
https://www.cell.com/cell-reports/fulltext/S2211-1247(25)00548-0

05/30/2025

A day late, but congratulations to our amazing graduates - Dr. Alex Lish, PhD;,Seohyun Kim, and Ellie Grogan! We are so proud of all you have accomplished and can't wait to see all the great things you'll do!

05/28/2025

Our fabulous graduate Alex Lish was profiled on the Harvard website today!

Over seven million Americans live with Alzheimer’s disease. Nearly 12 million more are involved in unpaid caregiving responsibilities for family members, friends, or other loved ones affected by Alzheimer’s or other types of dementia. Current therapies offer patients only modest relief. None cur...

05/10/2025

Thank you so much to Peter St. George-Hyslop, Li-Huei Tsai and Riqiang Yan for inviting me to present at the 3rd Targeting Therapy of Alzheimer’s and Related Neurodegenerative Disease Conference in Chania, Crete.

04/30/2025

We are excited to have our study published in Neuron today which provides a deep dive into the mechanisms underlying the role of Clusterin in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease. We show that protective CLU alleles enhance CLU upregulation in response to accumulated neuropathology, thereby dampening inflammatory signaling between microglia and astrocytes. This work was led by our fabulous graduate student Alex Lish, who will be receiving her PhD in May from Harvard University. A huge thank you to all of our amazing collaborators and funding partners including NIH and the Alzheimer’s Association.