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

Understanding discrepancies between self-reported and objective sleep in adolescents and young adults with subacute concussion.
(2025)
Sleep Adv 6(3): zpaf048
Wong CE, Luther MN, Scatena A, Koike S, Novak M, Elliott JE, Iliff JJ, Lim MM, Kosderka E, Piantino J

Focused Ultrasound Enhances Glymphatic Transport Robustly Across Anesthesia Levels.
(2025 Oct)
Ultrasound Med Biol 51(10): 1701-1709
Xiao H, Sreejith A, Howson I, Cruz AA, Key T, Iliff JJ, Aryal M

Glymphatic dysfunction in Alzheimer's disease: A critical appraisal.
(2025 Jul 10)
Science 389(6756): eadv8269
Keil SA, Jansson D, Braun M, Iliff JJ

The role of transient receptor potential melastatin channels in compressive force-induced contraction of primary cardiac pericytes.
(2025 Jun)
Physiol Rep 13(12): e70396
Methner C, Cilento E, Cao Z, Iliff J, Mishra A, Kaul S

A wireless device for continuous measurement of brain parenchymal resistance tracks glymphatic function in humans.
(2025 May 27)
Nat Biomed Eng
Dagum P, Giovangrandi L, Levendovszky SR, Winebaum JJ, Singh T, Cho Y, Kaplan RM, Jaffee MS, Lim MM, Vandeweerd C, Iliff JJ

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