Research Projects

Many older adults living in residential care homes suffer from dementia and depression. MIDDEL aims to determine if music interventions can help. Specifically, this trial will provide robust and generalisable results concerning the comparative effects of group music therapy (GMT), recreational choir singing (RCS), their combination, or standard...

The search for effective therapies and early detection strategies for Alzheimer’s Disease (AD), the major cause of dementia in Europe, is imperative. It is known that β-amyloid (Aβ) peptide plays a central role in neurodegeneration. In AD brain, Aβ is released in a soluble form that progressively becomes insoluble forming aggregates; extracellular...

NanoNeuroOmics ambition is to bring together nanotechnology, proteomics and blood biomarker discovery at the emerging intersection of neurodegeneration and neurooncology. NanoNeuroOmics proposes a nanotechnology-based innovative solution for the integrative profiling of the blood and brain tissue proteomes to address two interconnected challenges...

Age related memory decline, mild cognitive impairments (MCI), and cognitive impairments that occur with diseases, such as stroke, brain injuries, or early stages of dementia, have negative effects on the ability to navigate and to orient. Affected people who repeatedly start experiencing disorientation events often become scared of venturing out...

The MEMOLOAD project will focus on the molecular and biological mechanisms underlying memory loss that occurs in Alzheimer’s disease, the leading cause of dementia and an enormous medical, social and economic challenge to Europe. Several lines of evidence point to accumulation of beta-amyloid peptide (Aß) in the brain as the key pathologic event in...

Europe faces an enormous human toll of brain disorders, with an estimated 83 million people affected, and economic costs amounting to approximately €800 billion. Drug treatments for brain disorders prove often less than effective with a lack of selective cell targeting. A failure to develop new drugs has led major Pharmaceutical companies to...

Understanding of the normal and diseased brain crucially depends on reliable knowledge of its microstructure. Important functions are mediated by small cortical units (columns) and even small changes in the microstructure can cause debilitating diseases. So far, this microstructure can only be determined using invasive methods such as, e.g., ex...

Bio2Brain aims to create a trans-European network of industrially oriented specialists fully trained and experienced, a significant driving force in innovating novel technologies to deliver biopharmaceuticals safely and via the nasal route of administration to the central nervous system (CNS). Diseases of the CNS and the spinal cord affect around...

There is great need to develop safer and more biologically relevant models for drug screening. Recent reports indicate that up to 20% of acute kidney complications can be linked to drug-induced nephrotoxicity and more than 40 molecules found to reduce Alzheimer’s Disease (AD)-related plaques in animal models were shown to be ineffective in AD...

Brain disorders impose an increasing economical and social burden in the member states of the European Union (EU). For most neurodegenerative diseases and many neuropsychiatric disorders no efficient treatment is available and no cure exists. In the next coming years the number of particularly elderly people suffering from brain disorders will...

Dementia is an umbrella term for age-related brain disease, of which Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is the most common. Around 5-7% of adults over 60 years suffer dementia worldwide, with approx. 8.7 m people in the EU. A frequent precursor of AD is amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI), a clinical condition characterised by declines in memory skills...

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...