Dr. Jean-Marc Tayman belongs to the research group in neurobiology and gene therapy at the KULeuven. Eminent specialist of Parkinson's disease, he will present the latest advances of his research.
His abstract has mentionned that "Parkinson's disease (PD) is a debilitating movement disorder manifested clinically by tremor, slowness of movement, gait instability and rigidity. These symptoms are neuropathologically correlated to both the progressive degeneration of dopaminergic neurons of the substantia nigra pars compacta (SNpc) and the presence of Lewy bodies, ie eosinophilic intracytoplasmic inclusions, in the surviving neurons. Symptomatic treatments based on restoring brain imbalances arising from nigral cell death have been available now for more than 4 decades, however their efficacy declines as the disease progresses. An important challenge in the field is therefore to develop disease-modifying therapies capable of stalling or even halting disease progression. Coupled to this challenge is the need to identify disease biomarkers, in order to identify pre-symptomatic hallmarks of disease and monitor disease progression. At present the etiology of PD is unknown, however, some of the most promising leads to elucidate the molecular pathogenesis of PD are given by genetic studies linking genes (termed PARK genes) to the disease. The talk will discuss the genetic factors involved in PD pathogenesis and highlight research on the functions of PD gene products, with a focus on the dominant PD genes alpha-synuclein (PARK1/4) and leucine rich repeat kinase 2 (LRRK2, PARK8)".
The seminar will take place at room Maisin, on tueday 5th November at 6 pm.