Research Projects

Neuronal circuits in mammalian brain act predominantly via excitatory synapses on dendritic spines. Formation of new spines in adult brain constitutes the structural basis of neuronal plasticity. The underlying molecular mechanisms remain largely unknown but depend essentially on kinase-dependent signalling pathways. Final formation of synapses on...

Diabetes mellitus, hypertension, obesity, hypercholesterolemia, smoking and physical inactivity are common in elderly persons and are all associated with an increased risk of myocardial infarction, stroke and dementia. Efficacious treatments of these cardiovascular diseases are available, but in elderly patients with multiple cardiovascular...

Complexity of living matter currently poses the most significant barrier to modern in-vivo microscopy. Fuelled by various branches of life sciences, the race is now to increase the penetration depth of super-resolution imaging inside living organisms. Additionally, no high-resolution in-vivo imaging technique has ever been introduced into medical...

Age represents by far the largest risk factor for dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease (AD) dementia. However, not every person will develop dementia during aging, indicating that age-related processes may not inescapably lead to dementia. The elucidation of the fundamental processes occurring in aging will likely offer new options to prevent or...

Alzheimer's disease, the most common cause of dementia in older people, is a devastating condition that is becoming a public health crisis as our population ages. Despite great progress recently in Alzheimer’s disease research, we have no disease modifying drugs and a decade with a 99.6% failure rate of clinical trials attempting to treat the...

Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS) remains prevalent globally. Its association with dementia is unclear. We propose to investigate impacts of ETS on dementia risk and outcomes, and examine levels and determinants of ETS exposure post dementia. In a case-control study in the UK we will recruit 150 elders aged>=75 years with newly diagnosed dementia...

BBMRI-ERIC: the Biobanking and BioMolecular resources Research Infrastructure - European Research Infrastructure Consortium, aims to establish, operate and develop a Pan-European distributed research infrastructure in order to facilitate the access to biological resources as well as facilities and to support high quality biomolecular and biomedical...

New knowledge is not necessarily readily applied in medicine, even when there is evidence of its effectiveness. As a result of the gap between knowing and doing, policy makers, professional care providers, patients and their families have benefited too little from new developments. Implementation research has developed models for stepwise...

Given the increasing number of patients/consumers with dementia, political action is urgently required to prepare the health care services throughout Europe to deliver cost effective high quality long-term care to people concerned. Currently there is a lack of clinical research data of patients/consumers and informal caregivers to develop best...

Challenge. Caring for the increasing numbers of people across Europe with advanced dementia and palliative care needs who live in care homes is difficult and demanding. People with advanced dementia can be immobile, non-verbal and unable to take part in day-to-day activities. They can be unsettled or agitated, with low quality-of-life and elevated...

The number of elderly living with cognitive impairment is growing rapidly due to increasing life expectancy. The percentage of those who live alone depends upon the condition (i.e. roughly 30% of those diagnosed with dementia) but the majority would like to live in their own home or with family, provided that it is safe, comfortable, and cost...

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...