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21 July, 2021

Neuronal Reprogramming – Project Foundation La Caixa (Basic Research)

NEURONAL REPROGRAMMING TO SLOW HUNTINGTON'S DISEASE

Neuronal reprogramming to slow Huntington's disease - Foundation La Caixa project 2021

Creatio receives funding for a project of EUR 994,890 from the La Caixa Foundation

“La Caixa Foundation” has today announced the 30 projects that have been selected in the call for Caixa Research in Health 2021. One of these projects is led by the UB that also participates in other three. These are projects of excellence of biomedical research of research centers and universities in Spain and Portugal, to which a total of EUR 22.1 million has been allocated for development over the next three years. Nine of the selected projects will be performed in Catalan research centers.

With these grants “La Caixa” Foundation aims to support research projects performed in Spain and Portugal with the assistance of international collaborations whose goal is to deliver results that will ultimately benefit public health and well-being.

Dr. Josep M. Canals, Director of Creatio, the Production and Validation Center of Advanced Therapies, Principal Investigator of the Laboratory of Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine in the Department of Biomedicine of the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at the University of Barcelona, and researcher at the IDIBAPS, leads the project “Neuronal reprogramming to cure Huntington’s disease” which has received funding of 994.890 euros from this call.

The team at the University of Barcelona is completed by Dr. Petia Radeva, Full Professor and Leader of the Computer Vision and Machine Learning Group in the Department of Mathematics and Computing at of the Faculty of Mathematics and Computing of the University of Barcelona, and Senior Researcher at the Computer Vision Center, Dr. Daniel Del Toro, Ramon y Cajal and leader of the Molecular Neurobiology group, and Dr. Daniel Tornero, lecturer and leader of the Neural Stem Cells and Brain Damage group. Doctors Del Toro and Tornero are in the Biomedicine Department of the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, and all of these researchers are also members of the Institut of Neuroscience at the Universitatde Barcelona.

Huntington’s disease is the most common hereditary neurodegenerative disorder. Huntington’s disease symptoms normally become apparent between 30 and 40 years of age, when the deterioration of certain neurons causes motor dysfunction that results in uncontrolled movements in the form of chorea what become progressively worse. Knowledge of how neuronal alterations that occur during neurodevelopment, particularly, in the striatum, are translated into pathology during adult age is still limited.

The project will analyses unravel the role of neural progenitor cells that differentiate into striatal neurons that, during development and how they are affected in Huntington’s disease. The main goal is to understand the impact that these neural progenitor cells have on what neurodevelopment in the disease of the disease is and use this information to reprogram damaged neuronal circuits in vivo to slow down or delay the appearance of symptoms.

The results of this research will establish a causal link between abnormal neurodevelopment in Huntington’s disease and the symptoms and pathology that occur in the adult. These results will provide an important framework for developing new strategies to treat this neurodegenerative disease.

The project consortium is also composed of Dr. Sofia Grade from the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology at the Austrian Academy of Sciences (IMBA), Vienna BioCenter (Austria), Dr. Zaal Kokaia from Stem Cell Center, at Lund University, (Sweden), Dr. Anne Rosser from Cardiff University (UK), and the European Huntington Networks Disease Network.

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