Rachel Buckley

Dr. Buckley’s research interests lie in two parallel, but intertwined, facets of preclinical Alzheimer’s disease: sex differences and risk and resilience to disease. For sex differences, Dr. Buckley’s lab is interested in what risk factors and biological mechanisms might underlie the well published finding that women show higher levels of brain tau burden (on PET neuroimaging and in cerebrospinal fluid) than men. Her lab approaches this question by probing to different avenues: endrocrinological aging and reproductive health as well as the X chromosome. For the reproductive approach, her lab focuses on markers of menopause specifically (age at onset, use of hormone therapy, menopause severity, surgical history). For the X chromosome, they focus on gene expression on X-inactivated escaping genes (from brain tissue and plasma RNA sequencing) and their association with AD endophenotypes (amyloid, tau, neurodegeneration and cognitive decline). For her work in risk and resilience, Dr. Buckley’s group is involved with data harmonizing ~15 well-characterized observational human studies of Alzheimer’s disease in order to build predictive algorithms of cognitive resilience to the disease and brain resistance to the pathology over 5, 10, and 15 years. These models will be built using the latest approaches in machine learning and AI and will be externally validated in independent cohorts. Dr Buckley’s lab currently has four postdoctoral fellows, three data analysts and a data coordinator. Dr. Buckley co-leads the HABS Data & Informatics team, and is the Chair of the Sex & Gender Differences in Alzheimer’s Disease Professional Interest Area for ISTAART (Alzheimer’s Association). She also sits on the editorial board for Neurology and is Associate Editor at Alzheimer’s & Dementia: DADM. Dr Buckley is funded on an NIH-NIA K99/R00, an R01 (NIA) and an NIH DP2 New Innovator award.