News Archive
Patient-centered prediction of tau spreading in Alzheimer’s
November 2020 – The spreading of tau pathology throughout the brain is the major driver of cognitive decline in Alzheimer’s disease. ISD researchers developed a new functional connectivity-based prediction model for the forecasting of future tau PET spreading patterns in Alzheimer’s disease patients. This patient-centered prediction model provides a precision-medicine tool for predicting disease progression and defining a patient-tailored outcome measure to boost power in clinical trials targeting tau pathology...
Complicated Carotid Artery Plaques as a Cause of Cryptogenic Stroke
November 2020 – In up to 30% of patients the aetiology of stroke remains unknown. Applying high-resolution contrast-enhanced carotid MRI to patients with acute ischemic stroke ISD investigators identified nonstenosing complicated carotid artery plaques (cCAP) as an underrecognized cause of stroke. The most frequent feature of ipsilateral cCAP was intraplaque haemorrhage (89%), which can be reliably detected by conventional MRI sequences. Whether integrating carotid MRI into the diagnostic workflow would add clinical decision-making remains to be explored...
Neuropilin-1 opens the door to SARS-CoV-2 cell entry and infectivity
November 2020 – An international research team, coordinated by Mikael Simons (DZNE) with participation of the Gokce Lab identified neuropilin-1 as a factor that facilitates SARS-CoV-2 entry into cells including of the central nervous system. The study is now published in “Science”.
Metabolic signature differentiates ischemic stroke from stroke mimics
August 2020 – Early discrimination of patients with ischemic stroke (IS) from stroke mimics (SM) is important to allocate treatments, but poses a diagnostic challenge. Applying untargeted metabolomics to serum samples from > 800 patients with stroke-like symptoms, ISD investigators identified a signature of circulating metabolites that differentiates IS from SM with higher accuracy than multimodal cranial computed tomography upon hospital admission...
Visualization of biocompatible nanoparticles
July 2020 – Biocompatible nanoparticles have huge therapeutic potential, but could so far not be visualized. In a collaboration with investigators from Strasbourg, Igor Khalin (Plesnila Lab) now demonstrates that specifically designed ultra-bright nanoparticles can be traced in vivo by 2-photon microscopy. This technological breakthrough greatly improves our understanding how to target therapeutic compounds to the CNS...
Rolf-Becker Prize 2020 awarded to ISD scientist
July 2020 – Ali Erturk was awarded with the "Rolf-Becker"-Prize for one of the best scientific outputs in 2019/2020 by the Medical Faculty of LMU Munich. He received this prestigious award for his work on Deep Learning revealing therapeutic antibody targeting in the entire body published in CELL...
HDAC9 – from GWAS discovery to mechanisms and therapeutic targeting
June 2020 – Drug targets with support from human genetics have a higher probability of reaching phase III clinical trials and regulatory approval. Following their GWAS-based discovery of HDAC9 as a major risk locus for human atherosclerosis, ISD investigators identified a detailed mechanism linking HDAC9 to vascular inflammation. They further demonstrate that therapeutic inhibition of this HDAC9-dependent pathway confers plaque stability on top of atheroprotection …
ISD Research Retreat
July 2019 – July 10th and 11th ISD research teams met for the yearly scientific retreat to present their projects and discuss the science. At the heart of this meeting were presentations from all Ph.D. students, including an evning poster session. The last year brought about important achievements both scientifically and with regard to expertise and infrastructure. The meeting further served as an opportunity to familiarize people with the medium- and long-term strategy of ISD...
BRAIN price for French CADASIL researchers
March 2019 – Congratulations to our longstanding collaborators Marie-Germain Bousser, Anne Joutel, Hugues Chabriat, & Elisabeth Tournier-Lasserve (Paris, Fr.) for receiving the prestigious BRAIN price. Their groundbreaking work on CADASIL has profoundly influenced the understanding of cerebral small vessel disease & vascular cognitive impairment...
Functional connectivity associated with tau pathology
February 2019 – A combined fMRI and tau PET study in Alzheimer’s disease by Michael Ewers and team shows that the spatial pattern of tau pathology is predicted by functional network connectivity, suggesting that cross-talk between brain regions is conducive to tau spreading...
Skull-meninges connections revealed by vDISCO
January 2019 – The Erturk group developed a nanobody-based immunolabeling method, vDISCO, that enables imaging subcellular details in transparent mice. They uncovered neuronal projections and skull–meninges connections in whole adult mice that are likely to have relevance in both health and disease...
Novel risk loci for stroke
November 2018 – A genome-wide meta-analysis involving almost 900.00 subjects from the MEGASTROKE consortium and UK Biobank identified new risk loci for stroke among them endothelial nitric oxide synthase (NOS3). The study further suggests that genetic variation in the NOS - nitric oxide (NO) pathway in part affects stroke risk via variation in blood pressure...
Early cognitive screening predicts stroke outcome
October 2018 – ISD investigators in collaboration with researchers from France found that MoCA, a brief cognitive test, when taken within a week after stroke predicts the risk of cognitive impairment, functional impairment and mortality up to 3 years later. The findings inform clinical practice by highlighting the need of early cognitive screening after stroke...
