Wilcock, Donna M

Wilcock Lab Research:

The Wilcock lab is focused on understanding the vascular contributions to Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias. We take a multi-faceted approach in the laboratory that ranges from primary cell cultures, multiple mouse models, all the way to human biospecimens including plasma, cerebrospinal fluid, and brain tissue. Through extensive collaborations within Sanders-Brown Center on Aging, the College of Medicine, and around the world, we are advancing understanding of multi-etiology dementia that one day will contribute to a precision medicine approach to treat dementia. We have research projects studying mechanism, treatment, and biomarkers funded by the NIH / NIA, and we also serve as the Biomarker Core for the University of Kentucky Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center.

We will be using the HPC for sequencing projects and analysis of large datasets.

Single Cell Sequencing to profile glial cell response to anti-Aβ immunotherapy

This project seeks to evaluate microglia and astrocyte cellular responses by single cell sequencing after various intervals of anti-Aβ drug administration. This project is being worked on by Kate Foley (postdoc), and Donna Wilcock (PI).

MCR and gait analysis to better predict AD and dementias

This project is looking at the Motoric Cognitive Risk (MCR) and other gait-related biomarkers as potential predictors of dementia and AD. Specifically, a novel approach will be to analyze different fluid based biomarkers and their correlation with MCR and MCR-subtype profiles.

Computational Methods:

Genome alignment, read calling, quality control, annotation, differential expression analysis, psuedotime, etc.

Software:

We will be performing single cell sequencing so the computational methods will span from Cell Ranger, to Seurat, to Monocle3. All software is available freely online.

Collaborators:

We will be collaborating with Doug Harrison (Imaging Core) as he is helping in the first couple stages of single cell sequencing alignment and quality control.

Projects