Background pattern of a brain with neural connections

Deniz Kirik

Lead PI (Core Leadership)

Lund University

Deniz is a Professor of Neuroscience at Lund University and Honorary Professor at the University of Sydney. He has over 2 decades of experience and track record in the fields of cell and gene therapy with special focus on development of technologies for treatment of neurodegenerative diseases. His developed recombinant AAV vectors towards therapeutic delivery and for disease modeling in rodents and non-human primates. He has pioneered PD animal model based on the use of AAV vectors to express alpha-synuclein in nigral dopamine neurons. Furthermore, he has directed studies aimed at understanding the pathophysiological basis of L-DOPA induced dyskinesias and how advanced treatments using cell and gene-based therapies could alleviate these troubling side effects of oral L-DOPA medication.

Teams

Kirik

Themes

PD Functional Genomics

Recent ASAP Preprints & Published Papers

Transgenic A53T mice have astrocytic a-synuclein aggregates in dopamine and striatal regions

This study aimed to determine whether astrocytes accumulate a-synuclein before or after neurons, the present study histologically assessed astrocytes and a-synuclein accumulation in the M83 A53T transgenic mouse model of Parkinson’s disease prior to significant neuronal a-synuclein accumulation.

Dopamine and cortical iPSC-derived neurons with different Parkinsonian mutations show variation in lysosomal and mitochondrial dysfunction: implications for protein deposition versus selective cell loss

Mutations that cause Parkinson's disease give diverse pathological phenotypes. Those with PRKN loss of function mutations have significantly earlier selective vulnerability of dopamine neurons, those with SNCA mutations have increased alpha-synuclein deposition, while those with LRRK2 mutations have additional deposition of tau. Direct comparison of cell models with these mutations…