Research Projects

Loss of vision is frequently related to disorders of the retina that may be either primary or secondary such as involvement in metabolic or neurologic disorders. Since the retina constitutes an easily accessible outpost of the brain, it emerged as top research target for non-invasive diagnostics of neurological diseases such as Alzheimers disease...

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) heterogeneity is associated with distinct risk factors, clinical manifestations, rates of cognitive decline, and comorbidities. However, this population variance is not properly incorporated in clinical trial design, directly hampering successful development of treatments. As the field is shifting towards (early) secondary...

A major challenge facing Europe is its ageing population and associated increase in diagnosed cases of neurodegenerative diseases (NDD). Parkinson’s disease (PD) is associated with tremor and loss of motor functions due to progressive degeneration of dopaminergic neurons in the brain. This can lead to memory loss and dementia, which is associated...

CombiDiag DN aims to develop an AI-data-driven peripheral biomarker based combinatorial diagnostic protocol for early stages of Alzheimers disease (AD), a major form of dementia, and to train a new generation of fellows for this interdisciplinary field. Dementia, a devastating disease of older age, is the challenge of our lifetime and one of the...

Stroke-caused cognitive and neuromotor impairment is currently an increasing burden: post-stroke deficits are commonly believed to be treated with rehabilitation. Direct medical costs of stroke are stimated to increase up to 94.3 billion USD only in US. The indirect costs, including non-healthcare costs, are estimated at 15.9 billion. The journey...

Tracking of individual progression trajectory of neurodegenerative brain disease such as Alzheimer's disease (AD) can enable targeted interventions to prolong active living with increased quality of life and substantially reduce the socioeconomic burden. Approaches based on mechanistic modeling have the capacity to integrate heterogeneous data and...

Neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's disease (AD) are a major global health concern, affecting millions and placing significant economic burdens on healthcare systems. Despite advancements in understanding AD pathogenesis, effective treatments remain elusive. PhaSeAD (Phase separation in Alzheimer's disease and Phase-separated c-Abl dynamics...

Cerebral small vessel disease (SVD) is the leading cause of vascular dementia, plays a significant role in Alzheimer's disease and increases stroke risk, highlighting its critical impact on our ageing population. Endothelial cell dysfunction precedes other pathologies in both human SVD and preclinical models, where a causative deletion mutation and...

Within the ERC Consolidator Grant ProMiDis, my team and I have developed genetically engineered bacteria that function as a stand-alone, living discovery platform for short, drug-like cyclic peptides rescuing the misfolding and aggregation of proteins associated with human diseases (protein misfolding diseases, PMDs). By applying this technology...

Median survival for people that are diagnosed with glioblastoma (GBM) is only 15 months. Chemoradiotherapy and targeted therapies still fail to combat peritumoral relapse after tumour removal. Preventing peritumoral brain invasion is the main target to cure GBM. Our project aims to validate a proof-of concept for a new medical device (MD) GBM Neuro...

COMFORTAGE is a joint effort of medical experts (i.e., neurologists, psychiatrists, neuropsychologists, nurses, memory clinics), social scientists and humanists, technical experts (i.e., data scientists, AI experts, robotic experts) and Digital Innovation Hubs to establish a pan European framework for Community-based, Integrated and People-Centric...

Neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimers, Parkinsons or Multiple Sclerosis are severe health burdens and major global challenges for societies and healthcare systems. Therapeutic interventions in these diseases are not satisfying, since there is no treatment strategy that can halt or reverse disease progression. Several failed attempts at...