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Developing drugs for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease

Alzheimer’s disease, the most common cause of dementia, represents a major societal problem due to the lack of effective medical treatment options. The cost for dementia care is today huge and expected to further increase with an aging population.

Aggregation and deposition of amyloid-β (Aβ) as extracellular plaques and also of intracellular neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs) in the brain leads to neurodegeneration and functional decline by partly unclear mechanisms. Genetics indicate that Aβ-metabolism, the lipid transporter protein Apolipoprotein E (ApoE) and most recently also mechanisms of innate immunity are relevant to AD pathogenesis. Mutations in the innate immune receptor TREM2 represent a strong genetic risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease. TREM2 serves critical functions of microglia, the chief immune response cell of the brain.

Our goal is to develop a drug which affects TREM2-receptor signal transduction and thereby enhances microglial functions in Alzheimer’s disease brain.

Master project: 

To establish effective screening systems, identify and characterize Alzheimer’s disease drug candidates that modulate the TREM2 signaling pathway. It will be possible to test  treatment effects with drug candidates in a future PhD project, since the group has long-standing experience of working with Alzheimer’s disease mouse models.  

 

Methods:

You will gain experience with sterile cell culture, transfection, eukaryotic protein expression, protein purification, receptor binding assays, ELISA, SDS-PAGE Western blot and Flow Cytometry.

Working place:

The Nilsson group is localized at the Department of Pharmacology, Faculty of Medicine at Rikshospitalet, Oslo.

The candidate will work together with experienced colleagues.

 

Veileder:                                Lars Nilsson

Intern veileder:                      Marianne Fyhn

Published Mar. 22, 2018 10:27 AM - Last modified Apr. 19, 2018 8:14 AM

Supervisor(s)

Scope (credits)

60