Projects
Developing inhibitors of amyloid aggregation of tau and amyloid beta Flanders Institute for Biotechnology
Application of multifuntional and high affinity nanobodies targeting Serum Amyloid P component, a generic consituent of amyloid fibres. Ghent University
Heterotypic amyloid interactions as modulators of selective cellular vulnerability KU Leuven
It is currently not known what determines the selective neuronal
vulnerability of amyloids in neurodegenerative pathologies: we do
not understand how amyloids interact with other cellular components,
whether these interactions are specific, and how these interactions
result in cell-specific toxic phenotypes.
Our lab has played a crucial role in elucidating how aggregationprone
regions drive the self-assembly of ...
From genetics to the cellular phase of Alzheimer’s disease: untangling the role of lipid pathways in microglia responses to amyloid pathology KU Leuven
Microglia are critically involved in complex neurological disorders with a strong genetic component, such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson's disease and Frontotemporal dementia. While mouse microglia can recapitulate aspects of human microglia physiology, they do not fully capture the human genetic aspects of disease nor reproduce all human cell states. However, primary cultures of human microglia or microglia derived from human pluripotent ...
The brain system for language in cognitively intact elderly individuals: right-hemispheric recruitment in relationship to in vivo measures of amyloid load. KU Leuven
In this thesis we focused on brain amyloid deposition in a cognitively intact older population: we described its dependence on the genetic polymorphisms and its functional consequences on language and semantic processing. Moreover, we compared the performance of different amyloid biomarkers. All participants included in this project were community recruited cognitively intact older adults (52-74 years old Chapter 3 and 4 or 65-80 years old ...
A high-throughput platform for screening amyloid strains and their seeding capacity at single-particle resolution KU Leuven
The development of recent methods, such as cryo-electron microscopy, has had a great impact on our understanding of amyloid aggregates. Despite this recent influx of structural information, however, we still do not fully understand how differential intrinsic properties of amyloid strains/conformers, such as their morphology, co-aggregation potential and transmissibility barriers relate to selective cellular/tissue toxicity and aggregation ...
Halting amyloid induced tau pathology, by modifying ApoE-dependent lipid homeostasis: checking the FACTS on FATS as a modifiable target for preventing AD. Hasselt University
Curtailing gelsolin amyloid formation in a transgene mouse model by means of chaperone nanobodies Ghent University
Familial amyloidosis of the Finnish type (FAF) is an autosomal dominant hereditary amyloid disease. In human
patients, amyloid deposits arc found in the skin, cornea, vascular walls, peritoneum and facial nerves. Clinical
features include peri feral neuropathies affecting the cranial nerves, corneal dystrophy, Clllis /cua, kidney and hean
failure. There is a minor CNS involvement (slight impairment of memory, ...