Angelo Accardo received a grant entitled ‘Unveiling the connection between air pollutants and Alzheimer’s disease via engineered stem cell derived models’ from the NWO Domain Board Science.
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is one of the leading causes of morbidity in the elderly. An emerging hypothesis points towards a critical role of environmental factors, such as particulate matter (i.e. hazardous microparticles suspended in air) that accelerates the formation of AD hallmarks (i.e. amyloid plaques, neurofibrillary tangles). Nonetheless, this theory is limited to cohort and animal studies while the cell-particle connection remains unknown. To verify (or falsify) this hypothesis at the cellscale, we will pioneer physiologically relevant human 3D AD models by combining induced pluripotent stem cells-derived neurons from AD patients and biomimetic 3D engineered microenvironments.
Source: NWO
