Research Projects

The objective of the PETAL Project is to provide a platform able to increase elderly autonomy and assist them in carrying out activities of daily living. In particular, we aim to support older adults affected by mild dementia with useful and usable means to increase their awareness and control of their current lifestyle by providing them with...

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...

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...

When an adult mammal acquires new skills and new knowledge, the degree to which transition will occur from temporary to permanent memories of such events is governed by factors such as emotional weight and importance of the experiences for survival. To execute the necessary structural synaptic reorganisations needed to permanently embed novel...

The project develops an integrated theratainment solution for care, rehab and diagnostics. PLAYTIME motivates in a playful manner to perform personalized emotion-oriented exercise units to stimulate cognitive processes, to address physical activities and foster social inclusion. The objective is to motivate dementia users to enter a positive...

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...

Alzheimer’s disease, Lewy-body dementias (including Parkinson’s disease) and other neurodegenerative dementias are major causes of disease, reduced patient- and caregiver quality of life, and increasing societal health costs. All have lengthy (decades) pre-dementia- and pre-clinical stages, but patients will have suffered irreversible brain damage...

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is characterized by brain nerve cell death and dementia, but before dementia, leading up to these final and irreversible end-points we first see loss of synapses, which are the contacts between nerve cells allowing us to think, learn and function as independent beings. Coincident with early synaptic loss we also see...

Neurodegenerative diseases are one of the most important contributors to morbidity and mortality in the elderly. In Europe, over 14 million people are currently living with dementia, at a cost of over 400 billion EUR annually. Comorbidities with these conditions are frequent and a major obstacle to optimal diagnosis and management. Recent advances...

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...