Welcome to Suzee Lee’s Lab at the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences
Iluminating neural pathways from risk to resilience
Our Mission
To uncover how genes linked to frontotemporal dementia and Alzheimer’s disease influence the brain across the lifespan, and to illuminate risk and resilience factors that guide brain health
Research Questions
In people at risk for developing neurodegenerative diseases, can we detect brain differences before symptoms start?
Our work in adult asymptomatic carriers of genetic FTD variants has demonstrated anomalies in specific neural networks, decades before typical symptom onset.
These networks are the ones that degenerate during the symptomatic phase.
Our goal is to harness neural network measures to predict who is at risk for developing disease so that early intervention is possible for future treatments.
Are genetic variants that cause neurodegenerative diseases associated with differences brain development?
Carriers of FTLD and Alzheimer’s disease genetic variants have them even prior to birth. Yet, there is limited information as to whether these genes influence brain development from childhood to adulthood.
If genes for neurodegenerative diseases influence brain development, studying early life will provide insights as to how children and young adults show resilience to the effects of these variants.
Learn more about our FamilyND study for children from families with neurodegeneration.
