Meet the IMPAD team
The IMPAD project focuses on Parkinson’s disease (PD), a brain disease with so far no cure. PD therapeutic development is limited by the lack of novel targets and the absence of good accessible biomarkers that can be used for diagnosis and assessment of PD progression. The IMAPD project aims to define immune related biomarkers in blood that can be used as proxies for brain events, markers of progression and possible targets in PD, while in parallel assessing the translational potential of both cellular and animal PD models, for future studies of the described markers. Below, the IMPAD team members describe their background and roles in the IMPAD project.
MARINA ROMERO-RAMOS
Associate Professor, Dept of Biomedicine & DANDRITE, Aarhus University:
My team has, during the last decade, studied the immune response during PD. We have done so using animal models and patients’ samples. In this project we will be in charge of, using single cell techniques, define immune response in blood cells from well characterized patients with PD at different stages of their disease; as well as from brain and periphery of rodent PD models. Our aim is to define relevant cell populations and proteins involved in the disease process by comprehensive analysis of the immune changes with those found in neuronal populations as well as symptomatic observations in patients and models.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/marina-romero-ramos-48519547/
JØRGEN KJEMS
Professor, Interdisciplinary Nanoscience Centre (iNANO) Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Aarhus University
My group works on developing new types of targeted nanomedicine and novel methods to study biomarkers in connection with human disease. We are particular interested in RNA medicine with can be used both to target expression of specific genes and as artificial antibodies, also called aptamers, which can recognise specific changes in the complex pool of proteins in biofluids. The alter system will be used to identify novel biomarkers in the blood in connection with PD.
https://inano.au.dk/about/research-groups/nanomedicine-joergen-kjems-group/
PER BORGHAMMER
Professor, Nuclear Medicine & PET, Aarhus University Hospital
I have conducted research in the field of Parkinson’s disease since 2003. My main areas of expertise are multi-modal imaging of patients using PET, SPECT, MR, and CT techniques, but I also perform studies on animal models of PD, histology and tissue studies, and epidemiology. I aspire to create the most deeply phenotyped cohort of longitudinally followed PD patients to date with a view to identifying how different potentially pathogenic factors and biomarkers clusters in different subtypes of PD.
linkedin.com/in/per-borghammer-b787244
KARINA FOG & KASPAR RUSS - H. LUNDBECK
Our Team is part of Biological Research at Lundbeck. The main responsibility of the team is to support Drug Discovery and Development with disease relevant cell and animal-based models/readouts needed for compounds or biologics to be developed into drug candidates. Also we have high focus on the development of strong translational packages for the drug candidates. We have several projects in both early and late stages of Drug Development aiming for improved treatment of Parkinson’s Disease (PD).
In this project, we will contribute with a cellular model system based on human stem cells. We will investigate if the immune-related biomarkers, identified in blood from PD patients, can be recapitulated in cultures of human microglia cells exposed to an environment of either human neurons with PD pathology (alpha-synuclein aggregates) or reactive inflammatory human astrocytes. This would enable us to correlate efficacy of a potential treatment to changes in a biomarker and thereby provide strong support to the clinical development of a given drug.
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