Research Projects

Alzheimer’s disease is on the rise in our ageing population, and new, effective treatments are urgently needed. Currently, the safety and benefits to patients of potential treatments are assessed in strictly-controlled clinical trials. However, clinical trials do not provide information on the health benefits for patients in their daily lives in...

Alzheimer's disease (AD), the main cause of dementia, is one of the major global health challenges of our time. This disabling disorder affects 55 million people worldwide, with costs above $1.3 trillion. With 67 million people at risk for AD dementia (prodromal and preclinical AD) in Europe alone, it is a major unmet public health need, with...

There is an urgent need for novel approaches assessing functional decline in early AD. The main goal of the RADAR-AD project is to develop a digital platform to detect subtle functional deficits in early Alzheimer’s disease (AD) individuals by integrating a meaningful combination of smartphone, wearable and/or home sensor based parameters. The...

Transport proteins are the gate-keepers of our cells, effectively controlling the flow of nutrients and other molecules across the cell membrane. With over 400 members, solute carriers represent the largest class of transport proteins. Yet although they have been implicated in diseases ranging from Alzheimer’s disease and amyotrophic lateral...

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is an irreversible neurodegenerative condition affecting 50 million people worldwide. Despite intense research, the pathological mechanisms of AD are still unclear. Many genetic loci robustly associated with AD code for proteins that are preferentially or exclusively expressed in microglia, supporting a causal role of...

Direct quantification of dopamine neurotransmission is one of the unsolved problems that engaged scientific minds for the last fifty years. Such quantification is an extremely important tool to understand the underlying pathways that promote neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's and depression. Since dopamine is secreted only in micro-molar...

The main objective of Many-Me is to offer patients in different stages of dementia a friendly and enjoyable environment supported by ICT solutions, empowering them to self-manage their condition by engaging and learning from people in a similar situation, make friends and attend support groups, test and adopt routines or techniques that help memory...

Despite impressive advances in almost every field of neuroscience, our insights into brain function remain largely confined to its building blocks at the microscopic level, and to phenomenological descriptions at the macroscopic level. Understanding how complex mental functions originate from electrical and chemical processes in brain cells...

An emerging view of cortical area function posits that instead of primarily accounting for sensory processing and motor control, cortical areas might mediate flexible handling of sensory information and motor planning through learning and memory. In this project I propose to investigate this notion focusing on the function of retrosplenial cortex...

Neurodegenerative diseases (NDDs) of aging are a growing burden on societies. Although studies on the degeneration of neurons have been a main focus of research, increasing evidence points to synapses as the site where Alzheimer’s disease (AD), Parkinson’s disease (PD) and Huntington’s disease (HD) begin. There is growing evidence that synapses are...

Many elderly people suffer from one or another Mild Cognitive Impairment (PwMCI). Among many is forgetfulness which may or may not progress to dementia. They are faced with doubt, worry and diminishing self-worth while often being afraid to look for help. We will develop RESILIEN-T to act as a coach to improve the PwMCI self-management in different...

Alzheimer’s (AD) is a global epidemic with 50 M people suffering it and 76 M expected by 2030 (related costs near $1 Tri in 2018). To diminish its burden, an early detection is crucial, specially when modifying treatments become available. The most accurate method to measure AD hallmarks is positron emission tomography (PET), but current PET...