John Q. Trojanowski

About

John Q. Trojanowski, MD, PhD, is a professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He serves as the Director of the National Institute on Aging Alzheimer's Disease Center Core and the Institute on Aging at the University of Pennsylvania, as well as the Director of the Center on Alpha-synuclein Strains in Alzheimer’s Disease & Related Dementias. His research centers on the molecular mechanisms of neuron dysfunction, degeneration, and death in normal aging and neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, frontotemporal dementias with or without parkinsonism, and motor neuron disease. Trojanowski employs morphological, genetic, molecular biological, and biochemical methods to study human CNS and PNS tissue samples, cell lines, synthetic proteins, and transgenic models to understand disease pathology and progression.

Research topics

• Medicine
• Biology
• Pathology
• Neuroscience
• Internal medicine
• Psychology
• Genetics
• Biochemistry
• Bioinformatics
• Cell biology

Selected publications

• Large-scale proteomic analysis of Alzheimer’s disease brain and cerebrospinal fluid reveals early changes in energy metabolism associated with microglia and astrocyte activation

  Nature Medicine · 2020 · 1036 citations

  DOI

• Protein transmission in neurodegenerative disease

  Nature Reviews Neurology · 2020 · 599 citations

  DOI

• Type I interferon response drives neuroinflammation and synapse loss in Alzheimer disease

  Journal of Clinical Investigation · 2020 · 596 citations

  Type I interferon (IFN) is a key cytokine that curbs viral infection and cell malignancy. Previously, we demonstrated a potent IFN immunogenicity of nucleic acid-containing (NA-containing) amyloid fibrils in the periphery. Here, we investigated whether IFN is associated with β-amyloidosis inside the brain and contributes to neuropathology. An IFN-stimulated gene (ISG) signature was detected in the brains of multiple murine Alzheimer disease (AD) models, a phenomenon also observed in WT mouse bra…

  DOI

• Exceptionally low likelihood of Alzheimer’s dementia in APOE2 homozygotes from a 5,000-person neuropathological study

  Nature Communications · 2020 · 484 citations

  Each additional copy of the apolipoprotein E4 (APOE4) allele is associated with a higher risk of Alzheimer's dementia, while the APOE2 allele is associated with a lower risk of Alzheimer's dementia, it is not yet known whether APOE2 homozygotes have a particularly low risk. We generated Alzheimer's dementia odds ratios and other findings in more than 5,000 clinically characterized and neuropathologically characterized Alzheimer's dementia cases and controls. APOE2/2 was associated with a low Alz…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Distribution patterns of tau pathology in progressive supranuclear palsy

  Acta Neuropathologica · 2020 · 459 citations

  Progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) is a 4R-tauopathy predominated by subcortical pathology in neurons, astrocytes, and oligodendroglia associated with various clinical phenotypes. In the present international study, we addressed the question of whether or not sequential distribution patterns can be recognized for PSP pathology. We evaluated heat maps and distribution patterns of neuronal, astroglial, and oligodendroglial tau pathologies and their combinations in different clinical subtypes of…

  DOI

Recent grants

• Axonal Pathology and TBI-Related Neurodegeneration (TReND)

  NIH · $5.1M · 2016–2027

• NIH Grant R01CA036245

  NIH · $1.6M · 1999

• NIH Grant P50NS053488

  NIH · $33.7M · 2018

Frequent coauthors

• Virginia M.‐Y. Lee

  California University of Pennsylvania

  1709 shared

• Leslie M. Shaw

  University of Pennsylvania

  1375 shared

• Michael W. Weiner

  University of California, San Francisco

  975 shared

• Douglas Galasko

  University of California, San Diego

  877 shared

• Brit Mollenhauer

  University of Göttingen

  801 shared

• Murray Grossman

  598 shared

• Kenneth Marek

  Institute for Neurodegenerative Disorders

  586 shared

• Mark Frasier

  Michael J. Fox Foundation

  579 shared

Labs

• Pathology and Laboratory MedicinePI

Awards & honors

• Director, National Institute on Aging Alzheimer's Disease Ce…
• Director, Institute on Aging, University of Pennsylvania, Sc…
• Director, Center on Alpha-synuclein Strains in Alzheimer’s D…

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