Research

Our main research goal is to study pathogenetic mechanisms of Parkinson’s and Huntington’s diseases (PD and HD) and seek for novel strategies of therapeutic inventions. Our current research focuses are: 1) Protein misfolding, propagation and aggregation in PD, specifically, we are interested in studying how misfolded proteins in PD and other synucleinopathies transfer from one cell to another, and what the underlying molecular and cellular mechanisms are. We aim to seek for potential novel targets to interfere with these processes so as to halt the onset and/or slow down the progress of the disease; 2) Synaptopathies in neurodegenerative diseases. To this account, we focus on studying early pathological alterations in the synapses at the early stages of these diseases and aim to explore for early therapeutic strategies; and 3) Stem cell therapy for transplantation purposes and disease modeling, especially aiming for PD. The research line covers the hES cells and iPS cells.