Our aim is to develop new therapeutic options and advance them into clinical testing, and to decipher disease mechanisms in neurodegenerative diseases. These include Alzheimer's disease, cerebral amyloid angiopathy, cerebral small-vessel disease and cognitive sequelae after acute stroke.
In particular, we are interested in the role of neuroinflammatory changes in glial cells - astrocytes and microglia - and the neurovascular unit in these diseases. To this end, we use methods such as in vivo multiphoton microscopy, complex behavioral assays, cell-specific transcriptome analyses, ultra-high field MRI and bioinformatic analyses.
Our areas of interest include:
- The role of reactive astrocytes in Alzheimer's disease
- The role of astrocytes and glial scar formation in acute stroke
- Neuroinflammation in the white matter in cerebral small-vessel disease
- Pathophysiology of cerebral microinfarcts and microhemorrhages in cerebral amyloid angiopathy and Alzheimer's disease
- Cellular mechanisms of blood-brain barrier dysfunction and neurodegeneration in cerebral amyloid angiopathy
- Interactions of genetic and acquired risk factors in Alzheimer's disease
Based on this, we are also conducting translational and clinical studies focusing on the pathophysiology and treatment of acute stroke, cerebral small-vessel disease, vascular dementia and cerebral amyloid angiopathy.
Clinical research in our group focuses on vascular cognitive impairment and vascular dementia, i.e. neurodegenerative diseases in which cognitive impairment is caused by pathological vascular changes in the brain. In partiicular, these include cognitive decline after stroke, cerebral small-vessel disease and cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA). We study patients with these diseases in close collaboration with the Clinical Research Platform Clinical Research Platform and the Clinical Trials Unit of the DZNE Clinical Research and other DZNE sites in observational studies as well as interventional clinical trials.
In the context of study implementation and patient care, there is a close cooperation with the Department of Vascular Neurology at University Hospital Bonn Klinik für Vaskuläre Neurologie am Universitätsklinikum Bonn (Chair: Prof. Gabor Petzold), which also enables research rotations at the DZNE for scientifically interested physicians.
We are currently leading or participating in the following DZNE studies:
- DZNE-CAA - DZNE Cerebral Amyloid Angiopathy Study
- DEMDAS - DZNE Study on Mechanisms of Dementia After Stroke
- DESCRIBE - DZNE Clinical Registry Study of Neurodegenerative Diseases
- DANCER - Recruitment Pool of Potential Study Participants, of Realtives and a Control Group for DZNE Studies
- CAA-HIFI
- 7T-TGA - High-resolution MRI imaging in TGA patients