Projects

Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most aggressive brain cancer in adults. In spite of intensive treatment, median survival is still only 15 months. Reasons that explain failure to develop more efficient therapies include the high invasiveness of the tumor, its complex genetics, and interpatient and intra-tumoral heterogeneity. Understanding and mapping the complexity of the different tumour cell populations and how each of these respond to therapy, ...

Proposed title of the dissertation: Functional neuromonitoring in neonates Proposed outline of the dissertation: Over the last 10 years there is an increase in neuromonitoring in the neonatal intensive care unit, mainly using EEG and Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS). This gives more information regarding diagnosis, brain maturity, pharmacodynamics effects and prognosis. However, the currents neuromonitoring does not imply any functional ...

The use of nanotechnology in cancer therapy has attracted growing attention over the past decade. Many drug nanocarriers offering considerable advantages over conventional chemotherapy have been developed. Although binding strength and selectivity of nanocarriers with cell membranes can be controlled and has been investigated, the selective interaction with membrane receptors in e.g. drug delivery builds upon a sequence of steps, ranging from ...

Spina bifida (SB) is one of the most frequent malformations occurring in fetal central nervous system and it is correlated with several complications. Neurological impairments as lower cognition level and structural brain abnormalities as midbrain herniation and hydrocephalus have already been described over the past years. Currently, different surgical techniques have been tested aiming to achieve a better maternal and fetal outcome, ...

Adolescent transgenic mice with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) will be separated into two groups at random: standard housing and social isolation (SI). In addition, wild-type mice will also be randomly separated into a standard housing and isolation group. Each of the four groups will be tested as outlined below. We expect that SI to exacerbate AD-like symptoms in transgenic mice (see e.g. Huang et al., 2015; Hui, Feng, Zheng, Jin, and Jia, 2017). ...

Age-related neurodegenerative diseases have become a frequent cause of death in modern society since there are still no effective treatments available. To recover from the associated neuron loss, a large induction of adult neurogenesis, or neuroregeneration, is needed. Although new neurons are born in the adult vertebrate CNS, they often fail to successfully integrate in the aged non-permissive circuit. The fundamental processes underlying ...

Background:

Worldwide people are living longer and all countries face major organizational and socio-economic challenges in healthy ageing. Independent living is an important health issue and even more challenging for the geriatric patient. The geriatric patient is characterized by multimorbidity and a clinically recognizable state of increased vulnerability termed frailty: an aging-associated decline in reserve and function ...

One of the most intriguing aspects of human kind is our unique capacity for rapidly acquiring speech and language in the early years of life. However, disorders in speech and language are among the most common developmental problems in childhood. They can restrict the child from social participation and academic achievement and may lead to a permanent dysfunction. Equally, children’s intellectual and linguistic or communicative skills play an ...

Plant proteins often have inferior functionality than their animal counterparts. Nonetheless, the former represent a promising class of food ingredients as the latter are often more expensive and their production less sustainable. Plant protein functionality can be improved by various strategies, one of which is the formation of nanoparticles, via a process called antisolvent precipitation. This allows to form homogeneously distributed ...