Zhaoqi Yan Named a 2025 Warren Alpert Distinguished Scholar

Zhaoqi Yan, PhD, a scientist at Gladstone Institutes, has been named a 2025 Warren Alpert Distinguished Scholar. The fellowship award is given annually to five postdoctoral researchers in the United States who demonstrate exceptional creativity in the field of neuroscience.

Yan studies how blood proteins that leak into the brain through damaged blood vessels can drive brain inflammation and neurodegeneration. Molecular mechanisms behind this dysfunction in the blood-brain barrier remain unclear, and effective therapeutic strategies are lacking—something Yan hopes to change.

Yan's innovative research on blood proteins that leak into the brain could eventually lead to new therapies for a wide range of neurological conditions, including Alzheimer’s disease.

With the support from the Warren Alpert Foundation, he will use cutting-edge techniques to examine how blood proteins leaking into the brain can trigger the progression of neurological diseases, including Alzheimer’s. His innovative research has the potential to lead to new therapies for a wide range of neurological conditions.

“I’m energized by the scientific progress this award will enable,” Yan says. “With this support, I’ll be able to develop an independent line of research focused on neuroimmunology and the discovery of new treatment approaches for neurological disease.”

Yan joined the lab of Katerina Akassoglou, PhD, at Gladstone in 2020 after earning his doctorate in immunology from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Akassoglou, a pioneering investigator in the field of neurovascular biology, studies how blood proteins influence the nervous system and can lead to disease.

“Yan is an exceptionally talented scientist and well-deserving of this esteemed fellowship.”

Katerina Akassoglou, PhD

“Yan is an exceptionally talented scientist and well-deserving of this esteemed fellowship,” Akassoglou says. “This award provides him with the resources to take a big step forward in his career and advance research with clear patient impact.”

With Akassoglou’s mentorship, Yan co-led research that resulted in the key discovery that the blood protein fibrin may be responsible for the neurological symptoms in patients with long COVID—and demonstrated the beneficial effect of fibrin-targeted immunotherapy to combat those effects. The study’s findings, published in the journal Nature, led to new investigations into blood-brain barrier dysfunction in other neurological conditions.

The Warren Alpert Awards, established to help promising early-career scientists launch independent research programs, will provide $200,000 annually for two years to support Yan’s science and career development.