UNLV undergraduates from Jingchun Chen’s Lab Lead Alzheimer’s Research published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.
Two undergraduate researchers from Jingchun Chen’s lab at the Nevada Institute of Personalized Medicine (NIPM), Tyrell Pratt (School of Integrated Health Sciences) and Alice Lee (School of Life Sciences), have achieved a remarkable milestone: co-first authorship on a newly published study in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease (JAD). Their research, titled “Distinct Glial Functions Are Associated with Alzheimer’s Disease Based on Cell-Type- and Pathway-Specific Polygenic Risk Score Analysis,” introduces a novel analytical framework for understanding how genetic risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) manifest differently across various types of glial cells in the brain.
Additional Contributors:
- Jennifer Zheng (School of Life Sciences)
- Faria Tavacoli (School of Public Health)
- Hayley Ho and Tingwei Liu (NIPM)
- Hui Zhan, Ph.D. candidate, Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Program
This accomplishment reflects UNLV’s continued leadership in precision medicine and neurodegenerative disease research, and showcases how undergraduate students can contribute meaningfully to high-impact scientific discovery.
