Research
Alzheimer disease (AD), Parkinson diseases (PD), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and many other degenerative diseases of the nervous system and muscles are long-lasting diseases, some of them with very limited therapeutic perspectives. One of the reasons for the lack of efficient therapeutic strategies is the limited amount of information regarding early stages of the diseases. This is due to the fact that the clinical features of the diseases —those that permit their recognition— occur at relatively advanced stages, once the degenerative process has reached thresholds that overwhelm the capacity of the whole system to maintain basic neuronal functions.
Our main focus is the study of molecular and morphological changes at very early stages of the diseases, in the search for early biomarkers that might contribute to the detection of people potentially at risk of developing a disease.
And, therefore, this information may serve to implement therapeutic action geared to the prevention of clinical symptoms and aggressive progression of the disease.
It is also important to stress that most diseases of the human nervous system are only observed in humans. Brain donation and research on the human brain are essential to increase our understanding of how the brain works under normal conditions and how the brain deteriorates in disease. It is as important to know the mechanisms by which brain function declines with disease as it is to learn how the brain manages to be preserved and healthy in individuals of the same age and general condition. Several factors are at play: genetic, epigenetic, transcriptomic and environmental. These are the focus of our research
Publications
Below you will find all the publications and books made by the personnel of the Institute of Neuropathology. You can search it by year
