Clinical Neuroanatomy & Biobanking

To advance our understanding of human brain morphology, brain circuits and cellular disease mechanisms and translate this knowledge into novel diagnostic tools and therapeutic strategies to slow down or halt disease progression in Parkinson’s disease and related neurodegenerative disorders.

We aim to study human brain morphology and neuropathological lesions in postmortem brain tissue of aged individuals and patients with Parkinson’s disease, Dementia with Lewy bodies and Alzheimer’s disease in 3D at macro-, meso-, micro- and nanoscale using advanced imaging methods such as structural and diffusion MRI, 3D CLSM, STED, CLEM, and proximity ligation assays. Within our studies, we focus on understanding (i) the physiological and pathological role of alpha-synuclein and its interactors in GBA-related and sporadic Parkinson’s disease, ii) identification of tissue, biochemical and molecular biomarkers reflecting disease mechanisms in Parkinson’s disease (iii) the pathological sensitivity of MRI outcome measures in Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease and their promise as imaging biomarkers. In close collaboration with the Netherlands Brain bank, we collect and process high-quality brain and skin tissue of well-characterized Parkinson’s patients and Dementia with Lewy bodies for optical and molecular imaging and to study genotype-phenotype correlations.

Together with dept of Radiology and Pathology, we founded the ‘Normal Aging Brain Collection Amsterdam’ in 2014, which aims to collect post-mortem 3T and 7T postmortem quantitative MRI and brain tissue to study age-related and disease-specific signatures in the same patient from macro- to microscale and advance translational neuroscience. Postmortem MRI datasets and brain tissue are available to the scientific community through a Material Transfer Agreement. For more information please visit the NABCA website (http://nabca.eu).

In close collaboration with LUMC and TU Delft, we setup a large multicenter longitudinal observational study ‘Profiling Parkinson’s disease’ (ProPARK) to identify molecular profiles underlying disease severity, progression and adverse drug reactions and translate this knowledge into biomarker panels for next clinical trials. Annual clinical, biospecimen (blood, faeces and skin biopsies) and biannual kinematic data will be collected from 1250 Parkinson patients and 365 controls in the next three years by UMCs and peripheral hospitals in the Netherlands. In addition, we are involved in biobanking and biomarker analysis for clinical studies, for example ‘High Intensity Interval Training Parkinson’s disease’ (HIIT-PD), aiming to modify disease progression in Parkinson’s disease at Amsterdam UMC.