Research Projects

During the course of the PRISTINE proposal we have developed the first high precision high sensitivity stable isotope measurements for a variety of vital elements, including Zn, and Cu . With these technical advances we realized that we could monitor stable isotopic changes within organisms that open up a new way to study metal homeostasis as well...

The central aim of the project is to apply multimodal spectroscopy combined with machine learning to identify a fingerprint for Frontal Temporal Dementia (FTD) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) in saliva and plasma. FTD is the second most common dementia and usually affects individuals younger than 60 years old. FTD is difficult to diagnose, since there...

Chronic migraine is defined as a headache persistent for more than 3 months or a severe headache persistent for more than 15 days within a month. It affects approximately 2% of the world population. The World Health Organization classifies severe migraine attacks as among the most disabling illnesses, comparable to dementia and quadriplegia...

Human populations are impregnated by various types of chemical pollutants reported as hazardous waste present in the environment. Certain pollutants have adverse effects on brain, but the underlying mechanisms and time-window exposures are still unknown, as well as their contribution on dementia, the 7th leading cause of death. EXPOSIGNALZ project...

Neurodegenerative diseases are the top 3 leading causes of death and are viewed now as systemic diseases. Adaptive immunity including a T-cell response in the central nervous system (CNS) likely contributes to disease pathogenesis. How T cells are primed and recruited to CNS is largely unexplored, due to the complexity of the process and lack of...

There is an urgent medical need for efficient diagnostics for Alzheimer’s disease and related tauopathies, as well as disease modifying treatments, due to the heavy burden of the disease on patients, families and society. To address this public health issue, TAME R&I training network gathers leading academic and industrial experts in tau research...

CNS disorders, e.g. brain cancer and Alzheimers disease, are the most common, debilitating, and underserved diseases. CNS drugs have historically suffered from considerably lower success rates during development than those for non-CNS indications. One of the major reasons is the presence of CNS barriers, including the blood-brain (BBB) and blood...

The Project eBrain-Health will deliver a distributed research platform for modeling and simulating complex neurobiological phenomena of human brain function and dysfunction in a data protection compliant environment. It will provide thousands of multilevel virtual brains from patients and healthy human controls for research and innovation. Brain...

Advancing age is the major risk factor for many serious illnesses, including cancer, cardiovascular disease, and dementia. The rising number of older individuals is thus causing a major burden of ill health. However, individuals that reach an exceptional old age often seem to escape or delay age-related diseases, and part of this trait seems to be...

Alzheimer's disease is the most common form of dementia. It affects millions of people and is expected to increase in the coming decades due to aging of the population. Optogenetics combines optics and genetics to gain insight into brain function by genetically inserting light-sensitive transmembrane proteins into neurons. Channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2)...

Therapies for neurological disorders often involve deeply invasive brain operations or implants. A largely overlooked aspect of these conditions is the high comorbidity of GI-related disorders. Although the top-down relationship between the brain and peripheral organs has dominated the field, its now clear that activity of peripheral organs, in...

Cholesterol is a structural component of membranes and plays a key role in human health by regulating the fluidity of membranes and affecting signaling pathways. Intracellular cholesterol transport proteins (CTP) are responsible for maintaining cholesterol homeostasis by regulating local cholesterol concentrations, arising from de novo biosynthesis...