Project Title: Blocking the prion-like disease propagation in Parkinson’s disease and related disorders – model development and identification of cell-autonomous and cell non-autonomous factors.

The discovery of CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing systems have revolutionized the landscape for gene therapy approaches. I want to develop and apply such tools where I can selectively target the gene expression in specific cellular populations in central nervous system (CNS) for therapeutic purposes. An added value of these studies is to provide detailed insights into the mechanisms by which pathogenic forms of amyloid forming proteins “hijack” normal biology of CNS tissue and propagate from periphery into CNS, eventually leading to neuronal dysfunction and demise. I am collaborating on these projects with another AIAS fellow Rasmus O. Bak, Prof. Poul Henning Jensen and affiliated groups at Dandrite, Prof. Jens Randel Nyengaard and clinical histopathology labs at Aarhus University.