Molecular Neuroprotection

The mission of Molecular Neuroprotection is to:

• Develop new neuroprotective principles in neurodegeneration.
• Obtain mechanistic insight into molecular aspects of acute and chronic neurodegeneration.
• Explore the potential for manipulations of cellular or molecular pathways or mechanisms for prevention preventing or regeneration limiting neurodegenerative loss.
• To accomplish our aims, we will focus on emerging or poorly studied pathways in neurons or glial neural cells, including identification of new molecular targets for compound development as research tools or potential therapeutics. We aim to translate these diagnostic and therapeutic tools from bench-to-bedside.

• Radioactive labeling strategies, especially for the PET nuclides carbon-11 and fluorine-18; combinatorial-like PET tracer development
• Tool development to study CNS related pharmacological targets as GPCR´s, ion channels and enzymes
• Bioorthogonal chemistry: Applied radioactive, organic chemistry in living organisms
• Functional selective PET imaging: Is conformational selection the key to biased agonism?
  Nanoparticle imaging
• Targeting Keap1 and NOX2 to inhibit oxidative stress in the brain
• Examination of degeneration assocaited with -synuclein of neurons involved in non-motor symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease
• Alterations in cellular functioning in animal models of Alzheimer’s Disease overexpressing -amyloid

• Medicinal chemistry (drug design, small-molecule synthesis)
• Radiopharmaceutical chemistry (radiolabeling, molecular imaging such as PET and SPECT)
• Radioligand-based methods (in vitro, ex vivo, in vivo)
• Molecular biology and biochemistry (recombinant DNA technology, protein expression, purification, and characterization, MS, LC)
• Structural biology (X-ray and Cryo-EM structure determination, SAXS)
• Computational chemistry (structure-based ligand design and characterization)
• Fragment-based Drug Discovery (fragment-screening and characterization, optimization into leads)
• Molecular pharmacology (in vitro pharmacological assay development, high-throughput screening technology, heterologous, cell lines and primary cell cultures)
• Neurophysiology (neuron, microgliaal and astrocyte culturing, slice electrophysiology, in vivo electrophysiology)
• Animal disease models (Alzheimer’s disease, stroke/TBI)
• Human cell-based disease models (iPSC) (via collaborators)