Publications related to Viral vector-mediated gene therapy for Parkinson's disease

Distinct ultrastructural phenotypes of glial and neuronal alpha-synuclein inclusions in multiple system atrophy

Henning Paul-Julius Stahlberg, Amanda Jennifer Lewis, Domenic Burger, Marta Di Fabrizio, Carolin Böing

Multiple System Atrophy is characterized pathologically by the accumulation of alpha-synuclein (aSyn) into glial cytoplasmic inclusions (GCIs). The mechanism underlying the formation of GCIs is not well understood. In this study, correlative light and elec ...

2024

Unveiling the complexity of learning and decision-making

Wei-Hsiang Lin

Reinforcement learning (RL) is crucial for learning to adapt to new environments. In RL, the prediction error is an important component that compares the expected and actual rewards. Dopamine plays a critical role in encoding these prediction errors. In my ...

EPFL2024

Clinically compliant cryopreservation of differentiated retinal pigment epithelial cells

Cheng Zhao, Gioele La Manno, Alex Russell Lederer

Background aims: Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the most common cause of blindness in elderly patients within developed countries, affecting more than 190 million worldwide. In AMD, the retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cell layer progressively d ...

Elsevier Sci Ltd2024

Striatal Dopamine Signals and Reward Learning

Carl Petersen, Sylvain Crochet, Mauro Pulin, Yanqi Liu, Christos Sourmpis, Parviz Ghaderi, Pol Bech Vilaseca, Meriam Malekzadeh, Anthony Pierre Robert Renard, Robin François Virginien Dard

We are constantly bombarded by sensory information and constantly making decisions on how to act. In order to optimally adapt behavior, we must judge which sequences of sensory inputs and actions lead to successful outcomes in specific circumstances. Neuro ...

Oxford Univ Press2023

GABAergic-like dopamine synapses in the brain

Maria Reva

Dopamine synapses play a crucial role in volitional movement and reward-related behaviors, while dysfunction of dopamine synapses causes various psychiatric and neurological disorders. Despite this significance, the true biological nature of dopamine synap ...

2023

The role of the NF-kappaB pathway in Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis pathogenesis

Emma Charlotta Källstig

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a neurodegenerative motor disorder, which results in death within a few years of diagnosis. While the cause of most cases of ALS is unknown, 10% of cases are familial (fALS), and associated with mutations in one of ov ...

EPFL2023

Comparative Evaluation of Lipofectamine and Dendrimer for Transfection of Short RNA Into Human T47D and MCF-10A Cell Lines

Erfan Shirzadi

Purpose: Non-viral transfection approaches are extensively used in cancer therapy. The future of cancer therapy lies on targeted and efficient drug/gene delivery. The aim of this study was to determine the transfection yields of two commercially available ...

2023

Mitofusin-2 in nucleus accumbens D2-MSNs regulates social dominance and neuronal function

Bernard Schneider, Maria del Carmen Sandi Perez, Olivia Zanoletti, Jocelin Grosse, Elias Georges Gebara, Marie-Isabelle Guillot de Suduiraut, Simone Astori, Sriparna Ghosal, Eva Ramos Fernandez, Alessandro Chioino

The nucleus accumbens (NAc) is a brain hub regulating motivated behaviors, including social competitiveness. Mitochondrial function in the NAc links anxiety with social competitiveness, and the mitochondrial fusion protein mitofusin 2 (Mfn2) in NAc neurons ...

2023

Core-shell Structured Chitosan-polyethylenimine Nanoparticles for Gene Delivery: Improved Stability, Cellular Uptake, and Transfection Efficiency

Sandrine Gerber, Laura Camille Louise Nicolle, Perrine Agnes Edith Robin

Gene therapy emerged as a promising treatment option for acquired and inherited diseases. The delivery of nucleic acids relies on vectors that condense and encapsulate their cargo. Especially non-viral gene delivery systems are of increasing interest. Howe ...

2022

Dopamine Dynamics in Reward-based Learning

Jun Huang

Dopamine signals are thought to be important for reward-based learning and appear to play important roles in regulating synaptic plasticity in the nucleus accumbens and the striatum. However, the precise neuronal circuit mechanisms underlying the learning ...

EPFL2022

Engineering synthetic adhesins for biophysical investigation and rewiring of host-microbe interactions

Xavier Jean-Yves Pierrat

Host attachment is often a critical step in the onset of pathogenesis. To attach to host cells, bacteria have evolved a range of adhesins that bind to specific receptors. Some of these adhesins have been thoroughly characterized using biochemical technique ...

EPFL2022

Engineering of chitosan-based derivatives for non-viral gene delivery

Laura Camille Louise Nicolle

Gene therapy offers the possibility to treat or even cure diseases originating from genetic defects by introducing a therapeutic gene in target cells or correcting the initial defective gene. Amongst different options, non-viral vectors rely on the deliver ...

EPFL2022

Glutathione in the nucleus accumbens regulates motivation to exert reward-incentivized effort

Pascal Steiner, Maria del Carmen Sandi Perez, Lijing Xin, Olivia Zanoletti, Fiona Hollis, Alina Veronika Irene Strasser, Ioannis Zalachoras, Simone Astori, João Pedro de Matos Rodrigues, Eva Ramos Fernandez

Emerging evidence is implicating mitochondrial function and metabolism in the nucleus accumbens in motivated performance. However, the brain is vulnerable to excessive oxidative insults resulting from neurometabolic processes, and whether antioxidant level ...

2022

Dopamine Transporter, PhosphoSerine129 alpha-Synuclein and alpha-Synuclein Levels in Aged LRRK2 G2019S Knock-In and Knock-Out Mice

Salvatore Novello, Chiara Domenicale

The G2019S mutation in leucine rich-repeat kinase 2 (LRRK2) is a major cause of familial Parkinson's disease. We previously reported that G2019S knock-in mice manifest dopamine transporter dysfunction and phosphoSerine129 alpha-synuclein (pSer129 alpha-syn ...

MDPI2022

Meshing of Spiny Neuronal Morphologies using Union Operators

Felix Schürmann, Marwan Muhammad Ahmed Abdellah, Juan José García Cantero, Alessandro Enrico Foni, Nadir Roman Guerrero, Elvis Boci

Neurons are characterized by thin and long interleaving arborizations in which creating accurate mesh models of their cellular membranes is challenging. While union operators are central for CAD/CAM modeling and computer graphics applications, their applic ...

2022

Opposite effects of stress on effortful motivation in high and low anxiety are mediated by CRHR1 in the VTA

Maria del Carmen Sandi Perez, Olivia Zanoletti, Jocelin Grosse, Marie-Isabelle Guillot de Suduiraut, Ioannis Zalachoras, Simone Astori, Mandy Meijer

Individuals frequently differ in their behavioral and cognitive responses to stress. However, whether motivation is differently affected by acute stress in different individuals remains to be established. By exploiting natural variation in trait anxiety in ...

2022

Development of Covalent Chitosan-Polyethylenimine Derivatives as Gene Delivery Vehicle: Synthesis, Characterization, and Evaluation

Sandrine Gerber, Céline Marie Anne Journot, Laura Camille Louise Nicolle

There is an increasing interest in cationic polymers as important constituents of non-viral gene delivery vectors. In the present study, we developed a versatile synthetic route for the production of covalent polymeric conjugates consisting of water-solubl ...

2021

Cell Type-Specific Membrane Potential Changes in Dorsolateral Striatum Accompanying Reward-Based Sensorimotor Learning

Carl Petersen, Sylvain Crochet, Tanya C Sippy

The striatum integrates sensorimotor and motivational signals, likely playing a key role in reward-based learning of goal-directed behavior. However, cell type-specific mechanisms underlying reinforcement learning remain to be precisely determined. Here, w ...

OXFORD UNIV PRESS2021

Impaired reach-to-grasp kinematics in parkinsonian patients relates to dopamine-dependent, subthalamic beta bursts

Silvestro Micera, Matteo Vissani

Excessive beta-band oscillations in the subthalamic nucleus are key neural features of Parkinson's disease. Yet the distinctive contributions of beta low and high bands, their dependency on striatal dopamine, and their correlates with movement kinematics a ...

NATURE RESEARCH2021

Parkinson mice show functional and molecular changes in the gut long before motoric disease onset

Hilal Lashuel, Yang Liu

Background: There is increasing evidence that Parkinson's disease (PD) might start in the gut, thus involving and compromising also the enteric nervous system (ENS). At the clinical onset of the disease the majority of dopaminergic neurons in the midbrain ...

2021