Autophagy and mitophagy biomarkers as new markers for patients with alzheimer’s disease and mild cog
Title talk: Autophagy and mitophagy biomarkers as new markers for patients with alzheimer’s disease and mild cognitive impairment Author: Dr. Simone Patergnani University of Ferrara Italy Email:simone.patergnani@unife.it Co-authors: Carlotta Giorgi and Paolo Pinton University of Ferrara Italy Volume: Alzheimer's Disease 2023_CN33_AA02 Abstract: Dementia is a major neurocognitive disorder characterized by a progressive memory loss and impairment in cognitive and functional abilities. In dementia, the parts of the brain designated to memory, learning, and decision making are damaged or diseased. Dementia comes in different forms, Alzheimer’s and vascular being the most common types, and is often preceded by a mild cognitive impairment stage, a condition described as a transition phase between normal cognitive ageing and dementia. However, diagnosis and differentiation of dementia types requires a careful examination, especially in the elderly, since clinical and pathological findings often overlap. During the past few decades, it has been demonstrated how autophagy and its specialized form mitophagy are extensively associated with the development, maintenance, and progression of several neurodegenerative diseases. Despite this, it remains still elusive whether these molecular mechanisms are differential modulated in the different type of dementia and whether the assessment of these autophagy mechanisms could facilitate diagnosis and prognosis as well as accelerate the development of therapeutic strategies for neurodegenerative diseases. To unveil the contribution of autophagy and mitophagy in dementia, we investigated the serum levels of specific autophagy and mitophagy markers in a population of older patients with mild-moderate late onset Alzheimer’s disease or with mild cognitive impairment or affected by vascular dementia or with “mixed” dementia.
Biography:
To date, Dr. Simone Patergnani is performing their research activities at the University of Ferrara in the Department of Medical Sciences. Their research activities are mainly focused on investigating the contribution of different intracellular organelles in regulating different signaling pathways related to cell death in different human-associated pathologies. The research aims to verify whether alterations in the functionality of the mitochondria and the endoplasmic reticulum can have a significant effect in the regulation of processes of autophagy, apoptosis, and necrosis and, consequently, have taken place during the onset and progression of pathologies, in particular in cancer and neurodegeneration.
