Research Projects

Mounting evidence suggests that early life factors have an important impact on the occurrence of late-life neurological diseases. From a public health perspective this is of particular relevance for dementia, the prevalence of which is increasing drastically, with no available preventive treatment, and epidemiological data suggesting that...

An emerging view of cortical area function posits that instead of primarily accounting for sensory processing and motor control, cortical areas might mediate flexible handling of sensory information and motor planning through learning and memory. In this project I propose to investigate this notion focusing on the function of retrosplenial cortex...

Subjective cognitive decline (SCD) in elderly individuals with still normal cognitive performance is considered an at-risk condition of Alzheimer's disease (AD) dementia and may reflect its first symptomatic manifestation. This makes SCD a promising target for dementia prevention trials. This project aims at creating a transnational, harmonized...

Due to growing life expectancy and unhealthy lifestyles, dementia is a fast growing chronic disease that affects the behaviour and communication abilities of people living with this neurological disorder. Caregivers are often challenged by this fact, which could lead to stress, helplessness, aggressive situations and caregiver burnout. The SUCCESS...

The detection of biomarkers in body fluids is of great importance for disease early diagnosis. The clinical practice uses typically immunoassay methods (e.g. ELISA, Enzyme-Linked Immuno Sorbent Assay, and related techniques) for biomarker determination. Unfortunately, these techniques fail dramatically in a wide variety of cases where the...

2D-BioPAD is a cost-effective, non-invasive point of care/self-testing tool for the early and accurate prognosis (assistive diagnosis) of Alzheimer's Disease, with special focus on earlier stages such as Subjective or Mild Cognitive Impairment (SCI/MCI).

As Europe’s population is ageing, long-term care for elderly citizens will become an increasing cost for society. To manage this transition healthcare policies in the EU and individual Member States are heavily focussed on extending the independent life of the elderly, with the dual aim of increasing their quality of life and reducing the costs of...

Galanthamine is an alkaloid produced exclusively by plants of the family Amaryllidaceae, mainly belonging to the genus Galanthus, Leucojum and Narcissus. Owing to its acetylcholinesterase inhibitory activity, galanthamine is used and marketed for the treatment of the Alzheimer’s disease, among others. Although it is obtained by organic synthesis...

Understanding how fast events at synapses are converted into long-lasting changes of neuronal acti- vity is a very important question in neuroscience. Several recent studies demonstrated that synapses and nuclei are connected by bidirectional communication routes that enable the efficient transfer of information and regulate the long-term...

Disrupted neuronal connectivity and synapse dysfunction can manifest clinically as a range of emotional, behavioural and cognitive symptoms that are common to, and often overlapping in, mental disorders (MDs) such as major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia and neurodegenerative disorders (NDs) such as Alzheimers disease and...

Alzheimer´s (AD) and Huntington´s disease (HD) result from the erroneous communication of neurons at synapses in different brain areas (neocortex, hippocampus, striatum). The protein BDNF regulates synaptic communication under healthy conditions. However, insufficient release of BDNF from neurons and defective BDNF signaling in target neurons...

Given an overwhelming increase of dementia costs and an aging population, there is an urgent need for finding novel therapies for Alzheimer Disease (AD). We are, however, facing a large number of failed clinical trials and a retraction of the nervous system R&D programmes from several big pharmaceutical companies. Increased collaboration between...