Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease

As people age, they become more susceptible to various health problems, including neurodegenerative diseases. Neurodegenerative diseases are conditions in which nerve cells in the brain are increasingly damaged and/or die.

This causes problems with mental functioning and limits daily activities. Common neurodegenerative diseases include Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. These diseases are often chronic, disabling, incurable and can have a major impact on the quality of life of affected individuals and their families.

What we do know

In recent years, the number of cases of neurodegenerative diseases has increased significantly, especially in developed countries. This is due to several factors, including the aging of the population, changes in lifestyle and improved diagnostic capabilities. As people continue to age, we expect that neurodegenerative diseases will become more common, which will put pressure on healthcare and society as a whole.

In addition to aging and hereditary risks, the environment can also influence the development of neurodegenerative diseases. There are indications that certain viruses can increase the risk of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, but also that exercise and a healthy diet can contribute to (cognitively) healthy aging.

The role of BPRC in the fight against aging

At BPRC we look at:

• The brain, different brain cells and surrounding cerebrospinal fluid
• Changes in blood composition with aging
   

The brain, different brain cells and surrounding cerebrospinal fluid

We conduct research into the brain. To do this, we collect brains and cerebrospinal fluid from both our sick and normally aged monkeys. We dissect the brain and store as much material as possible in a structured manner for research. In this way, we are building a brain biobank that we can use to answer all kinds of research questions. At BPRC we use these tissues for research into the aging of the brain and (the development of) neurodegenerative disorders. In addition, through the brain biobank we can also help other researchers worldwide to answer important questions in brain research and aging.

Neuroinflammation

Neuroinflammation means that there are inflammatory reactions in the brain, mainly caused by the glial cells. These cells are also called the immune cells of the brain. We investigate how glial cells change as you get older. These cells show a lot of differences in, for example, their shape and function, where in the brain they are located, but also how they change during aging. This allows us to understand how different parts of the brain function and respond to diseases. This teaches us how glial cells work together with other cells in their environment and ultimately helps us devise specific treatments for diseases of the nervous system.

Neuropathology

In addition to neuroinflammation, diseases that affect your brain are often accompanied by damage to nerve cells and accumulations of proteins in the brain. These processes increase as these diseases worsen. However, even in healthy people these processes take place later in life, but do not always lead to disease. It is not yet known when this will lead to problems in brain functioning, resulting in reduced quality of life. We want to know whether we can investigate how these diseases occur in monkeys. To this end, we investigate whether the same changes take place in aging monkeys that are associated with old age and neurodegenerative diseases as we see in humans. In this way we want to understand how aging occurs in monkeys and how it is comparable to humans.

Changes in blood composition with aging

Aging causes many changes throughout the body, many of which leave an imprint on the blood composition. Previous research has shown that these changes can have an effect on various organs, including the brain. To find this out we investigate how blood composition changes in people during aging.

To investigate the change in blood composition during aging, we combined protein measurements (in human blood) from different studies. We discovered a number of proteins that are strongly linked to age-related diseases, such as problems with organs and dementia. What's interesting is that the degree of presence of these proteins in the blood plasma seems to be a good indication of not only how old a person is, but also how healthy a person is.

Why monkeys are needed for research

We perform analyses with the blood, brains and cerebrospinal fluid of monkeys and compare these with analyses from human research. This tells us whether monkeys are a good model to study further progression of these disease processes and the development of neurodegenerative diseases. We strive to make an important contribution with our research to ultimately stop such diseases in people.