Highlights in neurodegenerative disorders

Paul J. Lucassen completed his master studies in Medical Biology in Amsterdam in 1990. During his PhD from 1990-1995 at the Netherlands Institute for Brain Research in Amsterdam with Prof.Dr. Dick Swaab, he worked on neuronal activation and neurodegeneration in the hypothalamus and hippocampus in rodent models and human brain, focusing on Alzheimer’s disease. As part of this, he worked for some time in Philadelphia, USA with Prof.Dr. Gonatas. During his postdoc from 1995-1998 with Prof.Dr. Ron De Kloet in Leiden, he worked on stress effects on the hippocampus in relation to cognition, APOE, depression and dementia. He then became assistant professor in 1998 at the Swammerdam Institute for Life Sciences (SILS) of the University of Amsterdam (UvA) with Prof.Dr. Marian Joels where he worked on adult hippocampal neurogenesis and its regulation by stress, cognition and aging. He was appointed Lecture Professor in Wuhan, China in 2009 and became full professor at SILS in Amsterdam in 2011. His group studies Brain Plasticity, stem cells and neurogenesis and their molecular, hormonal, pharmacological and environmental regulators. His 4 PIs focus a.o. on (programming of) plasticity by factors like (early life) stress, nutrition, exercise, stimulants, microRNAs and epigenetics. They address effects on cognition, synaptic plasticity, fear/spatial learning and regeneration in conditions like depression, dementia, epilepsy and TBI. The group combines molecular, (epi-)genetic ‘-omics’ analyses, with in vitro and rodent (behavior) models, human brain imaging, patient cohort studies and clinical trials.