Waisman research scientist awarded a Young Investigator Grant to study depression in Alzheimer’s disease
By Emily Leclerc | Waisman Science Writer
Chenfeng He, PhD, research scientist at the Waisman Center, was recently awarded a Young Investigator Grant from the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation (BBRF). The one-year grant is intended to support early-career researchers in continuing to develop their own lines of research. He, a scientist in the lab of Waisman investigator Daifeng Wang, PhD, will be using the grant to continue his work on developing machine learning tools to better understand Alzheimer’s disease.
He joined the center in 2021, largely drawn by Wang’s extensive data on Alzheimer’s disease and expertise in machine learning for functional genomics. “I am very interested in the brain, how it works, and how it ages,” He says. Over the last several years, He and Wang have developed powerful machine learning tools that are capable of matching cellular characteristics to Alzheimer’s disease symptoms. Their paper on one tool was recently published in the journal Nature Medicine.
With this new grant, He plans to expand his work on Alzheimer’s disease and depression. Research has shown links between depression and Alzheimer’s and his recent paper supported that finding as well. He intends to expand and modify their machine learning tools to better analyze the underlying mechanisms of depression symptoms in Alzheimer’s, with a specific focus on comparing depression with major depression disorder (MDD).
“Depression in Alzheimer’s disease and MDD are clinically very similar and have very similar symptoms. But medications used to treat MDD, often don’t perform well for depression in Alzheimer’s disease,” He says. “This suggests that there are some underlying similarities as well as differences between the two and I am looking to investigate that.”
Grants like the BBRF Young Investigators Grant are of great importance in the research world. Support for early-stage research and researchers in the first several years of their careers is crucial for developing long-lasting and impactful lines of research. “I was very excited when I learned I had been selected,” He says. “It’s my first grant and it is helping support me as an early-stage investigator.”