Research Projects

Alzheimer disease (AD) is the most common cause of dementia (60-80% of cases) with a prevalence near 50 million people. There is no cure available and there are only two classes of approved drugs that are effective in treat some of the cognitive symptoms and potentially delay the clinical decline. Despite the considerable progress achieved in the...

"Scientific breakthroughs in neuroscience explain the need for sleep and the development of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases in terms of fluid dynamics: the waste created during the day is cleared away as we sleep or it accumulates. However, a decade of research after the original theory was posed has revealed...

This project aims to investigate the early associations between cardiovascular health and Alzheimers disease (AD) pathology, with a focus on subclinical atherosclerosis (SCAth) and cardiovascular risk factors (CVRFs), in a large cohort of asymptomatic, middle-aged individuals. The overarching objective is to determine how cardiovascular health in...

In this project, D. Salas-Gonzalez proposes to develop brain image processing with alpha-stable distributions with applications to intensity normalization, segmentation and diagnosis of Parkinsonian syndrome and Alzheimer's disease. The expected results of this interdisciplinary project will definitely have applications and impact in the European...

Establishing efficient prevention strategies for dementia and Alzheimer's disease is a major health priority. Since the cascade of events leading to Alzheimer's disease begins many years before the disease is detected, efficient prevention should be initiated early.

This requires identifying individuals in the general population who are at high...

The cerebral microvascular system is essential to a large variety of physiological processes in the brain, including blood delivery and blood flow regulation as a function of neuronal activity (neuro-vascular coupling). It plays a major role in the associated mechanisms leading to disease (stroke, neurodegenerative diseases, …). In the last decade...

The WHO has identified neurological disorders as a major burden and emerging challenge to global healthcare systems. These range from causes such as stroke and dementia, to injuries and viral infections. The prevalence of strokes and dementia are strongly linked to increasing age, for example stroke risk more than doubles every decade after 55...

Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia which seriously interferes with the daily life of millions of people. People suffering from Alzheimer’s disease show the accumulation of two misfolded proteins in the nerve cells of their brains – amyloid plaques and tau tangles. Although many aspects of the Alzheimer’s disease pattern are...

Today, five out of ten diseases worldwide resulting in long-term disability are related to the central nervous system. Due to the immense complexity and inter-individual variability of the human mind and brain there are still no effective and side effect free treatment options for many serious neuropsychiatric disorders, such as major depression...

Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) are fatal neurodegenerative diseases with overlapping genetics and pathology. The most common known cause is expansion of a GGGGCC repeat in the first intron of the gene C9orf72. I discovered that the repeat region is translated in all three reading frames into aggregating...

An expanded GGGGCC repeat in a non-coding region of the C9orf72 gene is the most common known cause of frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). The repeat RNA is transcribed and accumulates in neuronal RNA aggregates, implicating RNA toxicity as a key pathogenic mechanism. However, the pathways that lead to...

The calcium sensing receptor (CaSR) is a class C Gprotein-coupled receptor that plays a pivotal role in systemic calcium metabolism by regulating parathyroid hormone secretion and urinary Ca excretion. Abnormal CaSR function is implicated in calciotropic disorders, and in non-calciotropic disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD), cardiovascular...