The CMCM has started a partnership with the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB) to accelerate research on Parkinson’s disease (PD) and epilepsy.
With this donation, the CMCM is supporting a 3-year project that is studying in depth the dynamics of brain nerve cells in patients suffering from PD and epilepsy. “In some neurodegenerative diseases, nerve cells start to pulse synchronously in a very specific region of the brain”, explains Professor Alexander Skupin, who is leading the project. His team is investigating the reasons for this behaviour and aims to develop mathematical models that will help to better understand the ‘critical transition’ of these nerve cells from a healthy to a diseased state.
With this better understanding of the cellular causes of PD, the researchers hope to open up new avenues for developing therapies for epileptic and parkinsonian patients. This research project will be co-financed by the National Research Fund (FNR).