Research Projects

At present more than 5 million people in the EU suffer from dementia and other neurodegenerative diseases and that number will grow as the average age of the population continues to increase. The efficacy of current medicines is limited and new therapeutic targets are sorely needed. Several independent lines of evidence have established an...

The origins of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) remain elusive. The long pre-clinical phase of AD is universally recognized, but it is not known when predisposition for AD develops nor when the first signs and symptoms become discernable. In this regard, an essential role is played by the ‘reserve’ capacity of the brain, which is built up in early life and...

The increasing number of elderly people will have a major impact on the prevalence of age-related diseases, which will pose major challenges to keep health systems in Europe sustainable. Current knowledge is insufficient to identify the transition of normal brain ageing into Alzheimer`s Disease (AD)-like brain damage. Elucidation of the genes and...

Stroke-caused cognitive and neuromotor impairment is currently an increasing burden: post-stroke deficits are commonly believed to be treated with rehabilitation. Direct medical costs of stroke are stimated to increase up to 94.3 billion USD only in US. The indirect costs, including non-healthcare costs, are estimated at 15.9 billion. The journey...

The project develops an integrated theratainment solution for care, rehab and diagnostics. PLAYTIME motivates in a playful manner to perform personalized emotion-oriented exercise units to stimulate cognitive processes, to address physical activities and foster social inclusion. The objective is to motivate dementia users to enter a positive...

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is characterized by brain nerve cell death and dementia, but before dementia, leading up to these final and irreversible end-points we first see loss of synapses, which are the contacts between nerve cells allowing us to think, learn and function as independent beings. Coincident with early synaptic loss we also see...

Neurodegenerative diseases are one of the most important contributors to morbidity and mortality in the elderly. In Europe, over 14 million people are currently living with dementia, at a cost of over 400 billion EUR annually. Comorbidities with these conditions are frequent and a major obstacle to optimal diagnosis and management. Recent advances...

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and related disorders leading to dementia are associated with staggering costs and suffering. Recently, there has been some progress in the search for effective therapeutic interventions and it is clear that any treatment is likely to be most effective if administered at the earliest stage of disease, but the health care...

PHARMA-COG aims to develop a new integrated model to accelerate the development of drug candidates for MS, PKD and AD. The innovation relies on a 'multidimensional matrix' approach, integrating all available and renewed inputs (biomarkers/animal, human models/physiological and pharmacological challenges, Phase 0/1/1b to reduce the attrition rate...

COMFORTAGE is a joint effort of medical experts (i.e., neurologists, psychiatrists, neuropsychologists, nurses, memory clinics), social scientists and humanists, technical experts (i.e., data scientists, AI experts, robotic experts) and Digital Innovation Hubs to establish a pan European framework for Community-based, Integrated and People-Centric...

Elderly people are frequently affected by a decline of mental and physical abilities, which results in anxiety, frailty, loneliness and reclusiveness. Often these persons live alone, spatially separated from their families and friends, not able to meet or visit them on a regular basis. The risk of developing dementia can be reduced by playing...

PRIME introduces the novel concept of insulin signalling as a key mechanism underlying the multimorbidity of major mental and somatic illnesses. It is well known that aberrant insulin signalling causes high health and socioeconomic burden through its role in diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and obesity. We posit that the impact of ‘insulinopathies’ is...