AIAS-COFUND Fellow Asad Jan has received a postdoctoral fellowship award in the form of running costs amounting to DKK 900,000 granted by The Lundbeck Foundation to apply genome editing in a mouse model of Parkinson disease.

The project entitled ‘‘Blocking the prion-like disease propagation in Parkinson’s disease and related disorders – model development and identification of cell-autonomous and cell non-autonomous factors’ will target the genetic makeup of spinal cord neurons using viral vectors in order to prevent the prion-like propagation of alpha-synuclein in disease models. The project runs for a 3-year period.

More about the project

“The discovery of CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing systems have revolutionized the landscape for gene therapy approaches. I want to develop and apply such tools where I can selectively target the gene expression in specific cellular populations in the central nervous system (CNS) for therapeutic purposes. An added value of these studies is to provide detailed insights into the mechanisms by which pathogenic forms of amyloid forming proteins “hijack” normal biology of CNS tissue and propagate from periphery into the CNS, eventually leading to neuronal dysfunction and demise.

I am collaborating on these projects with another AIAS Fellow Rasmus O. Bak, Prof. Poul Henning Jensen and affiliated groups at Dandrite, Prof. Jens Randel Nyengaard and clinical histopathology labs at Aarhus University”, says Asad Jan about the project.

More about Asad Jan

More about The Lundbeck Foundation

Contact

Asad Jan, AIAS Fellow, Postdoc
Phone:  +45 8715 3262
ajan@aias.au.dk

Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies (AIAS)