Virginia Man-Yee Lee, Ph.D.

The John H. Ware III Professor in Alzheimer’s Research, Dept of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine; Director, Center for Neurodegenerative Disease, University of Pennsylvania


Dr. Lee is a world renowned leader in research on tau, alpha-synuclein and the beta-amyloid precursor protein and their pathobiological roles in such neurodegenerative diseases as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and frontotemporal dementias. In particular, Dr. Lee is attempting to determine the pathogenic roles of the abnormal proteins comprising senile plaques, Lewy bodies and neurofibrillary tangles, major pathological lesions found in the brains of patients with Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative diseases.

Funded Research

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

Selected Publications

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

Yuk Yee Leung, Jon B. Toledo, Alexey Nefedov, Robi Polikar, Nandini Raghavan, Sharon X. Xie, Michael Farnum, Tim Schultz, Young Baek, Vivianna M. Van Deerlin, William T. Hu, David M. Holtzman, Anne M. Fagan, Richard J. Perrin, Murray Grossman, Holly D. Soares, Mitchel A. Kling, Matthew Mailman, Steven E. Arnold, Vaibhav A. Narayan, Virginia M-Y. Lee, Leslie M. Shaw, David Baker, Gayle M. Wittenberg, John Q. Trojanowski, and Li-San Wang Identifying amyloid pathology–related cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers for Alzheimer’s disease in a multicohort study, Alzheimer's & Dementia: Diagnosis, Assessment & Disease Monitoring, 1(3), September 2015, 339-348, Read More

Michiyo Iba, Jing L. Guo, Jennifer D. McBride, Bin Zhang, John Q. Trojanowski, Virginia M.-Y. Lee Synthetic tau fibrils mediate transmission of neurofibrillary tangles in a transgenic mouse model of Alzheimer’s-like tauopathy, J NeuroScience, 33(3), January 16, 2013, 1024-1037, Read More

Jing L. Guo and Virginia M.-Y. Lee Seeding of Normal Tau by Pathological Tau Conformers Drives Pathogenesis of Alzheimer-like Tangles, The Journal of Biological Chemistry, 286/17, March 3, 2011, 15317-15331, Read More

Hu WT, McMillan C, Libon D, Leight S, Forman M, Lee VM-Y, Trojanowski JQ, Grossman M Multimodal predictors for Alzheimer disease in nonfluent primary progressive aphasia, Neurology, 75(7), Aug 17, 2010, 595-602, Read More

Choi SH, Leight SN, Lee VM-Y, Li T, Wong PC, Johson JA, Saraiva MJ, Sisodia SS Accelerated Aβ Deposition in APPswe/PS1∆E9 Mice with Hemizygous Deletions of TTR (Transthyretin), J Neurosci, (26), 6/27/2007, 7006-7010, Read More