Partnership to Identify Targets for Neurological Diseases

(National Institute on Aging, NIH)

The Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco, California and the pharmaceutical company H. Lundbeck A/S of Copenhagen, Denmark have agreed to study and identify therapeutic candidates for neurological diseases. The agreement funds research at the Gladstone Center for Translational Research led by Gladstone investigator Katerina Akassoglou, and establishes the new Lundbeck Center for Neurovascular and Immunoimaging at the Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease.

Gladstone says Akassoglou’s research on blood proteins identified novel targets for therapeutic intervention in neurological diseases. Akassoglou has also developed imaging techniques to study neurovascular diseases in vivo, which will help better understand the origins and progress of these diseases, and thus find more practical strategies for their detection and treatment.

Akassoglou says, “Our research on the role of blood proteins in brain functions has identified new targets for therapeutic intervention in multiple sclerosis and other neurological diseases,” adding that the collaboration with Lundbeck’s researchers offers “hope for discovering what triggers these diseases and developing novel therapeutic agents.”

The Gladstone Institutes is an independent institution, affiliated with the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Akassoglou’s main affiliation is with the Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease, but is also associate professor of neurology at UCSF, as well as holding other adjunct faculty positions. Lundbeck researches, produces, and markets pharmaceuticals for disorders like depression and anxiety, schizophrenia, insomnia, Huntington’s, epilepsy, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.