Hi friends,

I am so excited to be running the 2023 TCS New York City Marathon this November for Team Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation!  And I am humbled to be running in honor of my late mentor, Dr. John Trojanowski, a neuropathologist who dedicated his life to neurodegenerative disease research. John was a titan in the scientific community, a world-renowned neuropathologist with more accolades than steps it takes to run a marathon. He pioneered incredible advancements - from what we know about Alzheimer’s disease on a molecular level, to early detection in patients, to possible therapeutics to combat this devastating disease. 

While John passed away in February of 2022, his life-long partner (both in life and in science) was at his side, Dr. Virginia Lee. Since 1980, with Virginia, John co-directed the Center for Neurodegenerative Disease Research at the University of Pennsylvania. One of the most important functions of the center has been to bank brain samples from Alzheimer’s patients, which John and the team not only used to provide definitive diagnosis to families, but shared this precious resource with scientists across the globe to advance our collective understanding of this disease, and used these samples to make some of the most transformative neuropathological discoveries of our time. In collaboration with Virginia and others, he helped identify tau, a protein that misfolds to make one of the two classic hallmarks in the brain of Alzheimer’s patients.

I met John in 2009 when I began my post-doctoral fellowship at the UPenn Center for Neurodegenerative Disease Research. They say “never meet your heroes” but when I (finally) got to meet this scientific giant he instantly put me at ease.  He had this unique way about him that made me feel like I belonged in their lab, that the scientific questions I had were important and worth answering because they could help people one day, and he shared with everyone around him his child-like amazement every time he saw something interesting under the microscope. Whoever happened to be walking by when he was on the scope, he would call over and say “look at this!”  It was infectious.  John always supported me, both in the lab and in life.  He supported my running habit and encouraged me to run many marathons and triathlons while I was in his lab, including the Philadelphia marathon in 2010. Sometimes he’d wave from his bike as he passed me on the bridge to UPenn in the mornings. And sometimes, to cool off after our morning workouts, we’d have the same good idea of hanging out in the cold room surrounded by brain samples and incubating experiments, and we’d get a few minutes to talk about data and science…those will always be my favorite memories of John!

I also joke that I owe John and Virginia for introducing me to another post-doc in the lab named James, because we fell in love, got married, and have two beautiful children, Jack (6) and Diana (4). The night we found out John passed, we tucked our kids into bed with their stuffed neuron and brain toys and stayed up late telling them stories about John, the brilliant scientist who worked to make the world a better place and help people who were sick.  John has inspired me and will continue to inspire the next generation of budding scientists.

Thanks for visiting my fundraising page and for the support!  No donation is too small – 100% of funds raised goes directly to Alzheimer's research which allow scientists like John to continue their projects, and hopefully brings us one step closer to finding new treatments for this devastating disease.

With much love and gratitude,

Jenna

You can read more about John Trojanowski in the NY Times and on Alzforum.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/01/health/john-q-trojanowski-dead.html

https://www.alzforum.org/news/community-news/john-trojanowski-75-giant-field-neuropathology