In the afternoon of October 15, 2018, Dr. Patrik Verstreken, departmental director at VIB Center for Brain & Disease Research, VIB Leuven, gave a lecture entitled “Protein Homeostasis Defects in Parkinson’s Disease” as part of ShanghaiTech’s Life Science Seminar Series.
Parkinson’s disease affects millions of people around the world. The disease is characterized by typical movement defects that are caused by the loss of dopaminergic neurons, but several very debilitating non-motor symptoms occur more than 10 years before the motor symptoms. Dr. Patrik Verstreken discussed how they studied these non-motor symptoms including sleep disturbances and olfactory defects using large collections of knock in fruit flies that model the numerous familial forms of Parkinson’s disease as well as using human iPS cells from patients. A common emerging theme are defects in protein homeostasis that, in specific neuronal cell types, cause cellular defects that explain the Parkinson-relevant phenotypes. Their work reveals the mechanisms that cause early defects in Parkinson’s disease and it opens therapeutic avenues to start tackling this disease.
The talk was followed by a lively and stimulating discussion. Moreover, Dr. Verstreken engaged in comprehensive and thorough discussion with several professors.
【Patrik Verstreken】
1998-2003, Ph.D. in Developmental Biology with Dr. Hugo J. Bellen Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX. 2003-2006, Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Molecular and Human Genetics, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX. 2007-2013, Associate Professor, Faculty of Medicine, KU Leuven. 2013-present, Full Professor, Faculty of Medicine, KU Leuven. 2017-present, Departmental director of VIB Center for Brain & Disease Research, VIB Leuven.