Unit:
Κατεύθυνση ΝευροεπιστήμεςLibrary of the School of Science
Author:
Paschou Christina
Supervisors info:
Florentia Papastefanaki, Head of the Human Embryonic and Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell Unit, Hellenic Pasteur Institute
Rebecca Matsas, Research Director, Head of Department of Neurobiology, Hellenic Pasteur Institute
Christina Kyrousi, Assistant Professor, Medical School, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
Original Title:
The Role of Astrocytes In Parkinson’s Disease: A Cellular And Molecular Study
Translated title:
The Role of Astrocytes In Parkinson’s Disease: A Cellular And Molecular Study
Summary:
Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disorder after Alzheimer’s disease (AD), affecting approximately 1% of people above 60. The clinical manifestations of PD include both motor symptoms such as tremor, rigidity, postural instability, and akinesia/bradykinesia and non-motor symptoms, such as dementia, hyposmia, and sleep disorders. PD is to date incurable, likely due to incomplete understanding of the disease mechanisms in relation with inaccessibility of the human brain tissue and inadequate relevance of animal models. Astrocytes comprise a specific cell population of the brain that has recently attracted researchers’ attention for their critical participation in physiology and pathology. To examine the role of astrocytes particularly in PD and identify putative novel targets for treatment design, in this study we used a recently developed method to generate patient-specific astrocytes by using skin biopsies from PD patients and compared them with astrocytes generated from a healthy donor. PD astrocytes displayed distinct pathological characteristics implicated in their function suggesting cellular deficits related with PD pathology, such as protein quality control system dysfunction. We anticipate that our data will provide novel insight into the contribution of astrocytes’ malfunction in PD pathogenesis and our experimental setup could ultimately serve as a new drug-testing platform.
Main subject category:
Science
Keywords:
iPSC; reactivity; alpha-synuclein; glia
Number of references:
111
File:
File access is restricted until 2025-01-31.
Research Thesis_Paschou Christina_2022_Athens Inrternational Master in Neurosciences.pdf
3 MB
File access is restricted until 2025-01-31.
