Research Projects

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...

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...

Novel diagnostic techniques and disease models have the powerful potential to provide new insights into pathological and pathophysiological processes. Ocular manifestations of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) emerge as novel and attractive alternative to investigate disease progression in parallel to the brain. Using the eye as a window to the brain, we...

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 goal of the proposed research project is to analyze temporal disturbances in mental disorders and, as a result, to create a “map” of pathological experiences of time. The map will be phenomenological in nature, i.e. cutting across existing classifications of mental disorders and avoiding untimely biological explanations. The project is highly...

Critical to our understanding of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and also to finding therapies is determining how key pathological factors interact and relate to neuronal toxicity, symptoms and disease progression. My research has focussed on amyloid beta (Aβ) moities and demonstrated that cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) Aβ42 correlates with cerebral Aβ...

The annual worldwide cost of Alzheimer’s dementia was 777.81 billion Euro in 2015. This number will rise to 7.41 trillion Euro in 2050. Early diagnosis would save up to $7.9 trillion in medical and care costs by 2050 in the US alone. However, the emergent pathology is highly variable across people, necehighly variable across people, necessitating...

In the middle of 21st century Europe will become ‘the oldest continent’ in demographical terms. Obviously, the older we get the more susceptible to age related diseases (i.e. Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease) and inevitable physical limitations we become. Many seniors cannot live without daily care, either formal or informal. Today, more...

As global life-expectancy increases so do pathological age-related conditions impacting cognition. The worldwide prevalence of Alzheimer’s Disease is expected to rise from 46 to 131.5 million affected people in the next 30 years, which will drastically compromise quality of life for many individuals and place a considerable economic burden on...

For the human brain, music is a highly complex and versatile stimulus that is closely linked to speech, executive-motor, emotion, and memory networks. In severe ageing-related neurological disorders, such as post-stroke aphasia and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) dementia, music and singing may provide a valuable alternative route to verbal and emotional...

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...

Background: The projected steep rise in global dementia prevalence will largely occur in low and middle-income countries (LMIC) and vulnerable populations in high-income countries (HIC). Up to 30% of all dementia is attributable to potentially modifiable risk factors. Mobile Health (mHealth) technology allows for scalable and widely implementable...