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 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...

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...

MedGUIDE is a European innovation project that provides an innovative approach to support seniors with dementia with their medication adherence through smart pill boxes and social networking. The project aims to help elders with mild cognitive impairments living at home

The aim of CONFIDENCE is to develop a community-based mobility safeguarding assistance service for people suffering from mild to moderate dementia. CONFIDENCE combines “assistive technologies” with “personal help”. The CONFIDENCE service is built around a “virtual companion” providing different levels of assistance, depending on the situational...

Graphs are used in modern neuroscience to represent structural and functional connectivity of the brain acquired using magnetic resonance imaging. A number of pathologies affect these networks: their study holds vast promise for understanding and diagnosing brain diseases. But brain connectivity data is not trivial to process, and the predominant...

Dementia is currently diagnosed largely based on cognitive decline, while pathology starts years before symptom onset. To make progress in the development of effective drugs for dementia, there is an urgent need for biomarkers to enable precision health: for early and specific diagnosis and objective monitoring of disease progression. With its...

Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) is a central redox cofactor and the limiting substrate of key metabolic enzymes. The constellation of cellular functions in which NAD+ is involved makes its availability critical for cell survival, and its depletion is a leading factor in a number of diseases in humans, ranging from rare inherited defects to...

Medical diagnosis is currently undergoing a major revolution due to the fast discovery of molecular biomarkers, and the development of multimodal “metabiomarker” signatures. Progress, however, is hindered by low abundance of many biomarkers of interest in body fluids, in absolute concentration and with regard to other biomolecules. The aim of the...