Jiasheng Zhang, PhD

Specialist

I completed my PhD training in Medicine and Bioinformatics at Kanazawa University, Graduate School of Medicine, in Japan.

My current research focuses on neurodegenerative diseases FTLD, glia-neuron interactions, and animal models. We focus on genes in which mutations have been causally linked to human diseases. Specifically, our results show that FTLD gene Progranulin (PGRN) is required to suppress neuroinflammation in injury or toxin-induced neurodegenerative conditions. Loss-of-function in PGRN promotes neurodegeneration through activation of microgliosis and astrogliosis increases in proinflammatory cytokines.