Dr. Juan Troncoso is Professor of Pathology and Neurology with board certification in neurology and neuropathology. He received an M.D. from the Universidad Católica in Chile in 1973 and then trained in clinical neurology at Hahnemann Medical College (Philadelphia) and neuropathology at Johns Hopkins. His main research interest is the pathology and neurobiology of age-associated neurological diseases, focusing in particular on their early and preclinical stages. Dr. Troncoso directs the Brain Resource Center (BRC), the neuropathology tissue repository of the Johns Hopkins University Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (JHADRC), the Center for Excellence in Parkinson’s Research, the BIOCARD study, the JHU Huntington’s Disease Program, and the Frontotemporal Dementia Program. The BRC includes control and asymptomatic cases (i.e., individuals who were cognitively normal during life but have extensive Alzheimer’s disease pathology on autopsy). It also has a rich collection of over 100 brains from younger individuals between the ages of 25 and 65 years, suitable for morphological and molecular studies of normal aging and asymptomatic/preclinical Alzheimer’s disease.

The approach of Dr. Troncoso and his laboratory is to conduct morphological studies relevant to the pathobiology of Alzheimer’s disease and neurodegenerative disorders concurrently with collaborative studies of genetics, molecular biology, and proteomics. Dr. Troncoso’s laboratory has pioneered the application of stereological approaches to the study of normal aging and neurodegenerative disorders both in humans and experimental animals. Applying this methodology to postmortem material from the centers mentioned above, he has published extensively on the morphological aspects of asymptomatic Alzheimer’s disease, including the neuronal hypertrophy of hippocampal and cingulate neurons. Recently, Dr. Troncoso has published on the very early stages of TDP-43 proteinopathy in Alzheimer’s. His peer-reviewed bibliography includes more than 400 articles.