Erciyes University (ERÜ) is participating in a European Union project aimed at identifying cellular changes in the early stages of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s – progressive disorders that cause the loss and dysfunction of brain cells – to generate comprehensive data to help predict the progression of these diseases.
Professor Gökmen Zararsız, a faculty member of the Department of Biostatistics at ERÜ Faculty of Medicine, told Anadolu Agency (AA) that numerous clinical studies are being conducted worldwide for the treatment of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and other neurodegenerative diseases.
He explained that while there are currently some treatment options for Parkinson’s, drug research for Alzheimer’s is still at the basic research stage, though work in this area is ongoing.
Zararsız noted that Europe has a joint research initiative called JPND (Joint Programme on Neurodegenerative Disease Research) that focuses on these diseases. He shared the following details:
“This research initiative was established under Horizon 2020 – a program that supports technology development and research projects with allocated funding – and is also supported by institutions from each European country,” he added: He further explained, “The initiative issues annual calls on specific themes related to neurodegenerative disease challenges and provides funding accordingly. Last year, a call focused on better understanding the mechanisms in the early stages of diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s and developing ways to detect disease progression.”
“A budget of 18 million euros was allocated for this call. Many applications were submitted across Europe, and only 10 consortia were selected for funding. The consortium we are part of was among those 10, which is a great honor for us,” he said.
Zararsız stated that the three-year project is coordinated by the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases and includes institutions such as the Pasteur Institute and Imagine Institute in France and the Amsterdam University Medical Center in the Netherlands, along with ERÜ.
He elaborated on the goal of the project: “We aim to identify the cellular changes occurring in the early stages of diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s and to collect comprehensive data to predict disease progression. In doing so, we will obtain extensive genetic data that can lead to insights into disease progression and new treatment mechanisms. All of this large-scale genetic data will be sent to our university and we will analyze it to find solutions to the identified problems.”
Zararsız pointed out that the genetic data obtained through new-generation technologies are extremely large in size and cannot be analyzed on standard computers.
He emphasized that all the data collected from patient tissues and cellular models by other partners in the consortium will be brought to ERÜ: “We have a high-capacity server system at the ERÜ Drug Application and Research Center. Our research team will carry out all the analyses on this high-capacity server. This will also enhance our research capabilities. By increasing the capacity of our server, we will be able to perform analyses more efficiently for this project and future ones as well.”
Zararsız added that the project, which has a budget of approximately 1.262 million euros, also includes associate professor Gözde Ertürk Zararsız, lecturer Ahu Cephe, postdoctoral researchers and graduate students from the ERÜ Faculty of Medicine.