Research Projects

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is an age-related chronic neurodegenerative disease with four main pathological changes in the brain: amyloid plaques, fibrillary tau tangles, inflammation and neuronal loss. Phagocytes around amyloid plaques in late onset AD (LOAD) may be neurotoxic but have limited motility and phagocytic activity, suggesting a...

Assemblies of tau and α-synuclein were shown to spread along interconnected neuronal networks suggesting broadly relevant therapeutic directions for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. This requires a pre-clinical stage of development that has yet to be met. The scale of neurodegenerative disease burden in Europe calls for an unprecedented...

Neuroinflammatory disease, in particular multiple sclerosis affects more than 700.000 people within Europe alone. European countries are at the forefront of neuroimmunological research and students in medicine and biology are greatly attracted by the field. Neuroimmunology research further impacts our understanding of the ethiopathology of other...

The mammalian central nervous system is an intricate and fragile structure which on one hand is open to change in order to store information, but at the same time is vulnerable to damage from injury, pathogen invasion or neurodegenerative diseases (NDs). Microglia, representing the brain`s innate immune system, execute a number of physiological...

The European costs of dementia were estimated €177 billion and there is a growing gap between burden and budget. The debilitation associated with dementia makes it the most feared of conditions related to ageing . Modelling studies have estimated that if obesity rates dropped by 5%, dementia prevalence rates would be lower by 6% and a decline in...

The neuronal membrane is the target of specific molecular interactions involved in the development of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). The 2 hallmarks of the disease, extracellular amyloid β plaques and intracellular Tau neurofibrillatory tangles, are inherently linked to the membrane, as this biointerface induces and influences amyloid fibrillation...

The overall aim is to further the understanding of the BBB in health and disease states towards the development of innovative brain delivery systems, especially for biopharmaceuticals (e.g., peptides, antibodies, etc.) and the identification of novel disease drug targets (Alzheimer’s Disease, MS, metabolic disease).

The related key deliverables...

As the number of older people in Europe grows, increasing healthy life years is a priority. Cognitive decline, dementia (e.g. Alzheimer’s disease, AD), sleep disturbances and depression, all related to psychological distress and anxiety, are significant drivers of reduced quality of life in older adults. This project builds on evidence that...

Joint Action on Dementia 2015-2018. The Joint Action will focus on two phases on work: approximately 12 months on developing a consensus on the best evidence of effective action in 4 key areas (diagnosis and post-diagnostic support; crisis and care coordination; quality of care in residential care settings; and dementia-friendly communities); and...

Every year, Alzheimer's disease (AD) affects about 800,000 new patients in Europe and directly causes 50% of dependency of aged persons. Currently there is no test to diagnose this disease. There is a great need to improve outcomes for patients with lung cancer which causes between 15-28% of all cancer deaths in Europe. Chemical and structural...

The long-term goal of this project is to understand how neuronal assemblies exchange information (functional or neuronal communication), and how variability in neuronal communication explains variability in behavioural performance, both in the intact and injured brain. Communication involves temporal interactions between neuronal assemblies either...

In this project we seek to develop new smart imaging molecular tools for combating neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease and prion diseases. Emphasis is put on translational applied research for the development and validation of novel properly functionalized luminescent conjugated polymers (LCP) that via modern imaging technology...