2025 Searle Scholar Andrew Yang to Expand Inquiry into Blood-Brain Barrier

Andrew Yang, PhD, an investigator at Gladstone Institutes, has been named a 2025 Searle Scholar. He’s one of 15 early-career scientists to receive the prestigious award, which supports high-risk, high-reward research across a broad range of scientific disciplines.

This award will allow Yang to pursue independent research that sheds new light on the blood-brain barrier, a tight network of cells that separates the brain from the rest of the body’s bloodstream. The semi-permeable barrier selectively transports molecules in and out of the brain and regulates brain inflammation.

Yang will study which proteins can cross the blood-brain barrier and how this might change with age. He and his team will use advanced techniques to discover the role of these proteins in brain health and understand the pathways that allow proteins to travel across the barrier—knowledge that could lead to a new generation of therapies for neurological diseases and age-related disorders.

“The more we can learn about the rules of communication across the blood-brain barrier, the closer we’ll come to discovering new drug-delivery strategies to treat neurological diseases,” says Yang, who’s also an assistant professor in the Department of Neurology at UC San Francisco. “Being a 2025 Searle Scholar presents an incredible opportunity for my lab to take bigger leaps in understanding these complex mechanisms that are very likely tied to brain health throughout life.”

Yang joined Gladstone in 2024 after studying mechanical engineering and materials science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and then earning his graduate degree at Stanford University. During his graduate studies, he developed chemical biology approaches to observe an unexpected number of blood proteins crossing the healthy blood-brain barrier. He also created the first molecular atlas of human blood-brain barrier cells, discovering that these cells may have important roles in neurodegeneration.

“Andrew’s work has the potential to transform our understanding of how molecules and cells traverse the blood-brain barrier, which could advance many areas of neurological research,” says Lennart Mucke, MD, director of the Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease. “The Searle Scholars Award will result in scientific insights that could lead to new ways to slow brain aging and treat disabling brain conditions.”

The Searle Scholars Program supports independent research of young researchers in the biomedical sciences and chemistry, and will provide Yang with $300,000 in flexible funding over a three-year period.