Research Projects

The amyloid-beta (A) protein arises from the sequential proteolytic cleavage of A precursor protein (APP). The accumulation of A oligomers has been regarded as the causal factor of Alzheimers disease (AD). Basal metabolic production of the A peptide is typical in healthy people, and its production rate is normally lower than its rate of clearance...

Alzheimers (AD) and Parkinsons disease (PD) are prevalent neurodegenerative diseases, but their underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood. Emerging evidence suggests that neuroinflammation, characterized by the release of pro-inflammatory cytokines like IL-1, TNF-, and INF-, plays a pivotal role in these diseases, challenging the conventional...

Many pioneering advances in medicine and biology require observation of the microscopic world with high resolution and without damaging the specimen. One of the most widespread techniques is multiphoton fluorescence microscopy, which allows full 3D imaging via optical sectioning, i.e., imaging of planes within the sample without the need for...

Age-dependent neurodegenerative diseases associated with protein aggregation represent one of the most important medical and socio-economic challenges of our time. With the extension of human life span, the prevalence of this group of diseases has markedly increased. Among them, Alzheimer’s diseases (AD) and other dementias have become the second...

Alzheimer’s disease is a major cause of disability among older adults and represents substantial financial and human costs to patients, families and societies worldwide. Currently there is no cure for Alzheimer’s disease. Thus, novel effective treatments need to be developed that target the root causes of Alzheimer’s disease, in particular the...

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...

The recently approved drugs for Alzheimers disease (AD), targeting amyloid plaques removal, only mildly slow patients cognitive decline as neuronal loss starts decades before plaque deposition. To delay AD onset before symptoms development, prevention of neuronal death should be prioritised instead. An early AD pathological event is intraneuronal...

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...

Abnormal post-translational modifications (PTMs) can lead to the aggregation of Tau proteins, which characterize a wide range of neurodegenerative diseases known as tauopathies. Some abnormal Tau proteins will be released into biological fluids, providing a chance for minimally- or non-invasive diagnosis. For Alzheimer's Disease (AD), site-specific...

Changes in sleep patterns are common among people with dementia, however why short (≤6hrs) or long sleep (≥9hrs) duration is less favorable for dementia, remains unknown. Given that approximately 46% & 44% of variability in sleep duration is explained by genetics, it is pertinent to consider genetic influences when understanding the mechanisms...

Membrane proteins, particularly G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), represent 25-30% of current drug targets. Among them, metabotropic glutamate receptor (mGluR), a Class C and group 1 type GPCR, is emerging as an attractive therapeutic target for various neurological and psychiatric disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson's disease...

Neurological disorders have emerged as a significant global societal burden, exemplified by afflictions like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, impacting over one billion individuals globally and surpassing the combined economic burden of cancer and diabetes. This has spurred a concerted global effort, with increased support for neuroscience research...