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Christopher K. Glass, M.D., Ph.D.

Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Cellular and Molecular Medicine; Ben and Wanda Hildyard Chair for Hereditary Diseases, University of California, San Diego

Dr. Glass is Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Cellular and Molecular Medicine at UC San Diego where he holds the Ben and Wanda Hildyard Chair for Hereditary Diseases. His laboratory investigates transcriptional mechanisms that specify macrophage identities and regulate inflammation in cardiovascular, metabolic and neurodegenerative diseases. His work has contributed to the understanding of diverse anti-inflammatory actions of nuclear receptors, how broadly expressed transcription factors exert cell-specific functions, and how different tissue environments induce distinct macrophage phenotypes. A major current direction is to understand how microglia, the major type of macrophage in the brain, contribute to the development of Alzheimer’s disease.  Dr. Glass is a member of the American Association of Physicians, the National Academy of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences.

To learn more, visit the Glass Lab website.

Related Research:

Neuroimmune Consortium: Mechanisms Mediating Microglia Sensing of Peripheral Inflammation Christopher K. Glass 2024-01-11 Neuroimmune Consortium: Leveraging Enhancer Landscapes to Decode Alzheimer’s Disease Risk Alleles in Microglia Christopher K. Glass 2020-12-15 Interpretation of Noncoding Risk Alleles for Alzheimer’s Disease Christopher K. Glass 2019-08-27

Funded Research

These projects were made possible from Cure Alzheimer's Fund support.

Project Description Researchers Funding
Neuroimmune Consortium: Mechanisms Mediating Microglia Sensing of Peripheral Inflammation 2023

$287,500
Neuroimmune Consortium: Leveraging Enhancer Landscapes to Decode Alzheimer’s Disease Risk Alleles in Microglia 2020, 2022

$500,000
Interpretation of Noncoding Risk Alleles for Alzheimer’s Disease 2018 - 2019

$500,000

Selected Publications

These published papers resulted from Cure Alzheimer’s Fund support.

Balak, C. D., Han, C. Z., & Glass, C. K. Deciphering microglia phenotypes in health and disease, Current Opinion in Genetics & Development, January 3, 2024, Read More

Han, C. Z., Li, R. Z., Hansen, E., Trescott, S., Fixsen, B. R., Nguyen, C. T., Mora, C. M., Spann, N. J., Bennett, H. R., Poirion, O., Buchanan, J., Warden, A. S., Xia, B., Schlachetzki, J. C. M., Pasillas, M. P., Preissl, S., Wang, A., O'Connor, C., Shriram, S., Kim, R., … Coufal, N. G. Human microglia maturation is underpinned by specific gene regulatory networks, Immunity, August 14, 2023, Read More

Dolan, M. J., Therrien, M., Jereb, S., Kamath, T., Gazestani, V., Atkeson, T., Marsh, S. E., Goeva, A., Lojek, N. M., Murphy, S., White, C. M., Joung, J., Liu, B., Limone, F., Eggan, K., Hacohen, N., Bernstein, B. E., Glass, C. K., Leinonen, V., Blurton-Jones, M., … Stevens, B. Exposure of iPSC-derived human microglia to brain substrates enables the generation and manipulation of diverse transcriptional states in vitro, Nature Immunology, July 27, 2023, Read More

Fixsen, B. R., Han, C. Z., Zhou, Y., Spann, N. J., Saisan, P., Shen, Z., Balak, C., Sakai, M., Cobo, I., Holtman, I. R., Warden, A. S., Ramirez, G., Collier, J. G., Pasillas, M. P., Yu, M., Hu, R., Li, B., Belhocine, S., Gosselin, D., Coufal, N. G., Ren, B., & Glass, C. K. SALL1 enforces microglia-specific DNA binding and function of SMADs to establish microglia identity, Nature Immunology, June 15, 2023, Read More

Gratuze, M., Schlachetzki, J. C. M., D'Oliveira Albanus, R., Jain, N., Novotny, B., Brase, L., Rodriguez, L., Mansel, C., Kipnis, M., O'Brien, S., Pasillas, M. P., Lee, C., Manis, M., Colonna, M., Harari, O., Glass, C. K., Ulrich, J. D., & Holtzman, D. M. TREM2-independent microgliosis promotes tau-mediated neurodegeneration in the presence of ApoE4, Neuron, November 10, 2022, Read More

Paolicelli, R. C., Sierra, A., Stevens, B., et al. Microglia states and nomenclature: A field at its crossroads, Neuron, November 2, 2022, Read More

Nott, A., Schlachetzki, J. C. M., Fixsen, B. R., & Glass, C. K. Nuclei isolation of multiple brain cell types for omics interrogation, Nature Protocols, January 25, 2021, Read More

Nott, A., Holtman, I. R., Coufal, N. G., Schlachetzki, J. C. M., Yu, M., Hu, R., Han, C. Z., Pena, M., Xiao, J., Wu, Y., Keulen, Z., Pasillas, M. P., O'Connor, C., Nickl, C. K., Schafer, S. T., Shen, Z., Rissman, R. A., Brewer, J. B., Gosselin, D., Gonda, D. D., Levy, M. L., Rosenfeld, M.G., McVicker, G., Gage, F. H., & Glass, C. K. Brain cell type-specific enhancer-promoter interactome maps and disease risk association., Science, November 14, 2019, Read More

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