MSc in Molecular Medicine, Aarhus University. Has headed preclinical research for Teitur and is co-inventor of key Teitur patents. Research fields include molecular neuroscience, cell biochemistry, molecular imaging and structural-activity relationships of peptides.

I am a researcher at FINGERS Brain Health Institute and at Karolinska Institutet, in Miia Kivipelto’s team. I have a background in biochemistry and my research focus is in fluid biomarkers and molecular mechanisms of healthy brain aging and dementia.

A major focus of my research centers around the design and development of immunotherapeutic approaches for treating Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and related disorders. My interest and expertise in this area include development and studies of various types of AD and Parkinson Disease (PD) vaccines, including DNA and protein vaccines, viral vector, epitope-based vaccines, as well as strategies to enhance vaccine efficacy (chemokines, molecular adjuvants, etc.). I am also extremely interested in understanding the role of the adaptive immune system in AD and whether neuroprotective autoantibodies may slow or even prevent the development of AD. Over the course of my career, I have successfully collaborated with many researchers, producing over 50 peer-reviewed publications to date. My current project at UCI MIND we use human induced pluripotent stem cells and transgenic animal models to examine the underlying molecular mechanisms that mediate neurodegenerative diseases.

Camila de Avila, PhD is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Arizona State University-Banner Neurodegenerative Disease Research Center. She earned her BSc in Biology in 2008 from Pontifical University Catholic of Campinas-SP, Brazil; worked in research and development for Unilever, Valinhos, SP, Brazil, from 2007-2012; and earned her PhD in Neuroscience from Laval University in 2019. In her first postdoctoral position at Mayo Clinic Scottsdale, AZ, United States, in the laboratory of Dr. John Fryer, she explored transcriptional changes in the brain leading to dementia, in a porcine model of sepsis. She received training in cutting-edge techniques such as RNA-sequencing and computational biology. In her second postdoc position, in the laboratory of Diego Mastroeni and Thomas Beach, she is combining her passion for neuroanatomy with molecular biology to study transcriptomics, in humans. Her ultimate goal in to unravel the contributions of the human nucleus incertus of the brainstem in memory and Alzheimer’s disease. This research focus is largely motivated by recent findings in animal models showing that activation of the nucleus incertus prevents contextual memory formation.

Dr. Philip De Jager is the Weil-Granat Professor of Neurology at Columbia University Medical Center, where he is the Chief of the Division of Neuroimmunology. The division consists of the Columbia Multiple Sclerosis Center and the Center for Translational & Computational Neuroimmunology. He focuses on characterizing and modulating the immune system in inflammatory and neurodegenerative diseases. He also serves as the Deputy Director of the Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) and the Aging Brain. Using a deep integration of computational methods and rigorous molecular biology, he is defining the sequence of molecular events that leads a healthy immune system to become dysfunctional and ultimately engage the central nervous system as a target. He has delineated molecular networks and cellular communities in the CNS that lead to AD, with an emphasis on defining the basic biology of aging human microglia. His new Brain-MAAP Initiative expands these efforts by generating large-scale multi-omic data in a spatially registered manner from human brain. Overall, the goal of Dr. De Jager’s work as a clinician-scientist is to apply modern methods of human immunology, genomics, molecular genetics and computational biology to the understanding and treatment of common neuroinflammatory and neurodegenerative diseases.

I am a 3rd year PhD student at KU Leuven, Belgium. I have a background in Biomedical Sciences and Advanced Medical Imaging. The main focus of my study is blood-based biomarkers for Alzheimer's Disease. During this conference I will present on the relationships between blood-based AD biomarkers and multimodal PET imaging (amyloid, tau and synaptic density).