Yuxing Xia, MD, PhD

Yuxing Xia, MD, PhD

Yuxing was born in Hunan province in China and grew up around the suburbs of Philadelphia. He went to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor where he majored in Biology and Creative Writing and Literature through the Honors program. He worked in several neuroscience labs before embarking on the MD-PhD path. He decided to attend the University of Florida (UF) for his combined MD-PhD training. He joined Dr. Benoit Giasson's lab at the Center for Translational Research on Neurodegenerative Diseases (CTRND) and was affiliated with the McKnight Brain Institute (MBI). For his PhD research, he studied microtubule dysfunction and aggregation of tau protein in Alzheimer's disease models and also worked on several projects involving alpha-synuclein in Parkinson's disease. For his main thesis project, he studied the tau S320F/P301S aggregating mutations (SPAM) and discovered a role of phosphorylated tau in gut enteric neuron dysfunction and cell death. Of note, he defended his PhD thesis on April 1st. Throughout the years, his research has been supported by a F30 fellowship through the National Institute on Aging, the Toffler Trust, the Bryan-Robinson Foundation, and the Clinical Translational Science Institute at UF. Yuxing is excited to join UCLA for neurology residency and to explore Los Angeles. In his free time, he enjoys biking along the beach, running, reading poetry, and playing chess.