Plasticity of human microglia and brain perivascular macrophages in aging and Alzheimer’s disease is now online in Nature Genetics.
We profiled 832,505 myeloid cells from the prefrontal cortex of 1,607 donors and sorted them into 6 subclasses and 13 subtypes. A disease-associated microglia subtype marked by high GPNMB expands as Alzheimer’s pathology worsens. It carries a lot of the disease’s genetic risk and is more phagocytic, MITF keeps cells in that state, and its protective effect depends on TREM2.
Donghoon Lee is first and co-corresponding author, sharing first authorship with James Vicari and two of our graduate students, Christian Porras and Collin Spencer. Code: DiseaseNeuroGenomics/scMyeloidAD.
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Update, September 2026: the paper is the cover story of the September issue. More here.