Congratulations to George Tofaris, IMPRiND coordinator, who has been awarded a prestigious MRC Senior Clinical Fellowship. He is using induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) derived from patients to model alpha-synuclein aggregation in human neurons, and genetic screens to decipher relevant pathways that target aggregated alpha-synuclein for destruction. This MRC Fellowship will allow George's team to continue their work on fundamental mechanisms that cause Parkinson's disease @The_MRC. This is also an example of how IMI funding promotes academic careers and further collaborations @imprind

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The laboratories of Erwan Bézard (Research Director INSERM; Institute of Neurodegenerative Disorders), Laurent Groc (Research Director CNRS ; Interdisciplinary Institute for Neuroscience), Laurent Cognet (Research Director CNRS ; Laboratoire photonique numérique et nanosciences) and Valentin Nägerl (Professor at University of Bordeaux ; Research Director CNRS ; Interdisciplinary Institute for Neuroscience) have been awarded the ERC Synergy Award 2020. The ENSEMBLE project aims at underpinning the molecular mechanisms of physiological and pathological brain function. This ambitious and innovative endeavor is based on their ability to develop new approaches in high-resolution microscopy at the service of a new conceptual framework in brain cell communication through the study of the extracellular space, the compartment into which specific disease-related (e.g. Abeta, Tau, Synuclein) or treatment-related (e.g. antobodies) proteins accumulate and/or pass through. Shedding light on these fundamental and clinically-relevant questions will thus provide new insights into basic disease mechanisms as well as new avenues for therapy, such as new strategies to achieve adequate delivery of active molecules in specific brain areas (e.g. immunoglobulins for immunotherapy that bear huge promise but fail so far to meet their endpoints). #ERCSyG

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