Jeff Iliff, PhD

Personal Statement

I focus on neurodegeneration and traumatic brain injury research at the VA Puget Sound and at the UW Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center.

My work has probed the ‘glymphatic’ system, a brain-wide network of perivascular spaces that facilitates the clearance of waste products, including amyloid beta and tau, from the brain interstitium during sleep. Previously at OHSU, my group demonstrated that the glymphatic system fails in the aging brain and in the young brain after traumatic brain injury. The studies suggest that impairment of glymphatic function may be one factor that renders the aging brain vulnerable to protein aggregation and neurodegeneration and may link brain trauma early in life with the development of dementia in the decades that follow. My ongoing work seeks to define the molecular and cellular underpinnings of impaired glymphatic function in the aging and post-traumatic brain, and to use novel MRI-based imaging approaches to extend these findings into clinical Alzheimer’s disease and post-traumatic populations.

As the leader of the ADRC’s new Research Education Component, I oversee the effort to train and develop a community of clinical, basic and translational Alzheimer’s disease researchers with the necessary clinical, scientific and technical competence to effectively collaborate to define the mechanistic and biological underpinnings of Alzheimer’s and related dementia, and to translate this understanding to improve the lives of those living with memory loss and dementia.

Department Affiliations

Recent Publications

Catecholamine Dysregulation in Former American Football Players: Findings From the DIAGNOSE CTE Research Project.
(2025 May 27)
Neurology 104(10): e213584
van Amerongen S, Peskind ER, Tripodis Y, Adler CH, Balcer LJ, Bernick C, Alosco ML, Katz D, Banks SJ, Barr WB, Cantu RC, Dodick DW, Geda YE, Mez J, Wethe JV, Weller JL, Daneshvar DH, Palmisano J, Fagle T, Holleck M, Kossow B, Pulukuri S, Tuz-Zahra F, Colasurdo E, Sikkema C, Iliff J, Li G, Shenton ME, Reiman EM, Cummings JL, Stern RA, DIAGNOSE CTE Research Project

Biological sex and BMI influence the longitudinal evolution of adolescent and young adult MRI-visible perivascular spaces.
(2024 Aug 19)
bioRxiv
Yamamoto EA, Koike S, Wong C, Dennis LE, Luther MN, Scatena A, Khambadkone S, Iliff JJ, Lim MM, Levendovszky SR, Elliott JE, Barisano G, Müller-Oehring EM, Morales AM, Baker FC, Nagel BJ, Piantino J

Aquaporin-4 mis-localization slows glymphatic clearance of α-synuclein and promotes α-synuclein pathology and aggregate propagation.
(2024 Aug 19)
bioRxiv
Braun M, Simon MJ, Jang J, Sanderson K, Swierz J, Sevao M, Pincus AB, Schaser AJ, Elliott JE, Lim MM, Unni VK, Schindler AG, Keene CD, Latimer CS, Iliff J

Glymphatic influx and clearance are perturbed in Huntington's disease.
(2024 Oct 22)
JCI Insight 9(20):
Liu H, Chen L, Zhang C, Liu C, Li Y, Cheng L, Ouyang Y, Rutledge C, Anderson J, Wei Z, Zhang Z, Lu H, van Zijl PC, Iliff JJ, Xu J, Duan W

Repetitive Head Impacts and Perivascular Space Volume in Former American Football Players.
(2024 Aug 1)
JAMA Netw Open 7(8): e2428687
Jung LB, Wiegand TLT, Tuz-Zahra F, Tripodis Y, Iliff JJ, Piantino J, Arciniega H, Kim CL, Pankatz L, Bouix S, Lin AP, Alosco ML, Daneshvar DH, Mez J, Sepehrband F, Rathi Y, Pasternak O, Coleman MJ, Adler CH, Bernick C, Balcer L, Cummings JL, Reiman EM, Stern RA, Shenton ME, Koerte IK, DIAGNOSE CTE Research Project

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