Funded Grants

This project will use cells found in bone marrow as a potential means of delivering treatments to the diseased area in brain and spinal cord.

The blood-brain barrier (BBB) plays an essential role in protecting the brain from blood-borne diseases.

Dr. Lutz is currently completing his post-doctoral fellowship entitled “Epigenetic mechanisms of childhood maltreatment”, in which he investigates the strong relationship between childhood malnutrition and mental health outcomes.

In recent years, it was discovered that a microscopic worm called C. elegans could mimic some of the aspects of human ALS when they were engineered to have abnormal (mutant) genes that cause the disease.

Dr. David and his research team are studying the mechanisms that control the delivery and release of iron in the nervous system.

This project proposes to integrate the low-invasive, non-lethal in vivo sampling/sample preparation SPME approach with MS detection to obtain the full profile of brain metabolome and lipidome, the quantification of drugs and monitoring of their metabolism, selective extraction of target compounds (drugs or selected endogenous metabolite), as well as high resolution chemical imaging of deep brain structure.

Currently, AD diagnosis can only be confirmed post-mortem by observing two AD hallmarks in the brain, β-amyloid (Aβ) plaques and tau strands.

Toxic amyloid proteins are known to be a significant contributing factor in the development of Alzheimer’s disease.

The existence of different strains of misshapen proteins in the brains of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients is emerging as an obstacle to the development of effective treatments.

In Alzheimer s disease (AD), critical synaptic connections between neurons disintegrate and cells die.