The etiology of many neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Parkinson’s disease (PD) affecting the central nervous system (CNS) is unknown and still needs more effective and specific therapeutic approaches. Although the etiology of neurodegenerative diseases is not fully understood, accumulating evidence suggests that neuroinflammatory processes, mainly mediated by activated microglia and astrocytes, are crucial for the initiation and progression of PD and AD and precede their clinical manifestations. Thus, the control of glial activation may be useful for preventing and treating the neurodegeneration in the adult brain, and the mechanical characterization of endogenous biomolecules involved in neuroinflammation may be necessary to find a novel therapeutic strategy against PD and AD.

 

Gene therapy has a promising future in treating neurodegenerative disorders by correcting the genetic defects or by therapeutic protein delivery and is now an attraction for many researchers and neurologists to treat brain disorders, like AD, PD, spinocerebellar ataxia, etc.  Advancements in gene transfer technologies bring closer to reality the amelioration of disease states by introducing genes into the brain. Our current research focuses on the development and use of novel gene constructs which can potentially protect against neurodegenerative disease or insults to the brain by delivery of growth factors or anti-apoptotic molecules. This can result in neuroprotection and neurorestorative effect in the adult brain to stimulate and re-activate the central nervous system.

 

 

 The long-term research focuses on the following:

 

1.      Identification of novel pathogenic factors contributing to AD and PD pathogenesis and combating against them by the application of AAV gene constructs.

 

2.    To investigate the role of Rheb and AEG-1 as survival factors and neurorestorative agents in neurodegenerative disease animal models.

 

 

 

 The successful achievement of our research projects will contribute to development of advanced experimental techniques required for neuroscience research and therapeutics against neurodegenerative diseases.