Among the 600 maladies that afflict the nervous system, neurodegenerative disorders (NDs) are multifactorial debilitating diseases that currently affect >30 million individuals worldwide with devastating consequences both to patients and their families. During the last decades, a variety of pathophysiological mechanisms as well as clinical features have become common to different NDs, such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Parkinson’s disease (PD), prompting the need for studying them in an integrative fashion. Thus, the first part of the course will be dedicated to common, overlapping mechanisms found in several NDs such as imbalance proteostasis (protein degradation/aggregation), inflammation, metabolic stress (mitochondria failure/oxidative stress), cell-to-cell communication/disease propagation, (Wallerian) degeneration & lipid signaling/metabolism. The second part of the proposed course will include clinical and neuropathological presentations followed by current/innovative therapeutic interventions for specific diseases/clinical entities - such as AD, PD, polyglutamine (poly Q) diseases, multiple sclerosis, neuropathic pain, e.t.c.

Aiming to bridge across fields of neurodegenerative pathologies, this course will bring together faculty with expertise in molecular, pathological and clinical standpoints of neurodegeneration related to prion, Tau and Aβ (AD), a-synuclein (PD), ataxin-3 (MJD), huntingtin (HD) and other proteins. Faculty will be constituted by 2o members (8 international, 4 national and 8 internal ones) with heterogeneous backgrounds covering all the topics to be presented. A significant amount of time has been therefore scheduled to maximize interactions between participants and faculty.