The Hans and Ilse Breuer Foundation awards annual prizes to excellent young scientists.
Award winners
Here you can find out which outstanding publications have received awards from the Hans and Ilse Breuer Foundation. In addition to information on the award winner, you will also find a brief description of the respective publication.
Title of the publication
„Reactivated endogenous retroviruses promote protein aggregate spreading.“
in: Nat Commun. 2023 Aug 18; 14(1):5034. doi: 10.1038/s41467-023-40632-z. PMID: 37596282
Short summary of the paper
Our recent study reveals a potential link between the reactivation of endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) and the progression of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s disease. ERVs are remnants of ancient viral infections embedded in our DNA, which are typically inactive, but become reactivated in neurodegenerative diseases. Our research demonstrates that once reactivated, ERVs promote the spreading of protein aggregates, such as Tau, between cells, accelerating disease progression.
The spread of protein aggregates follow a prion-like mechanism, where small seeds of misfolded proteins transfer between cells, fueling further misfolding and contributing to the degeneration seen in Alzheimer’s. ERVs enhance this process through viral envelope proteins, which promote direct cell-to-cell interactions and the uptake and cytosolic release of harmful protein aggregates. Interestingly, viral envelope decorated extracellular vesicles, serve as vehicles for intercellular transmission of protein aggregates, exacerbating the spread of toxic protein misfolding. Importantly, our findings suggest that targeting ERVs with antivirals could offer a new therapeutic strategy to slow down the protein aggregate spreading.
This study uncovers a novel mechanism how ERVs, derepressed in neurodegenerative diseases, could contribute to disease progression. It underscores the need to explore antiviral treatments as a mean to combat the harmful effects of protein aggregate spreading, potentially opening new avenues for disease intervention in Alzheimer’s and related disorders. Our work sheds light on the intricate role that ancient viral elements may play in accelerating protein misfolding, and how controlling these processes could be a key to future treatments.
Title of the publication
„MRI or 18F-FDG PET for Brain Age Gap Estimation: Links to Cognition, Pathology, and Alzheimer Disease Progression“
in: THE JOURNAL OF NUCLEAR MEDICINE, Vol. 65, No. 1 January 2024
Short summary of the paper
Brain aging is characterized by the accumulation of deleterious biological changes, making it highly susceptible to inter-individual differences. Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients display a more pronounced decline in brain integrity compared to healthy elderly individuals, suggestive of an acceleration of the brain aging process. Therefore, the difference between brain age and chronological (passport) age—referred to as the brain age gap (BAG)—may provide valuable insights into brain health, and different types of the BAG (e.g., structural or functional) could potentially reflect distinct aspects of AD risk. In this study, brain age was estimated by training machine learning algorithms to estimate chronological age from 18F-FDG PET (metabolic) or T1-weighted MRI (structural) scans, aiming to identify which AD processes are conveyed by metabolic or structural BAGs. The results indicated that metabolic BAG represented a sensitive marker of early cognitive changes even before measurable cognitive impairment occurs, i.e., already in individuals with only subjective cognitive decline. Structural BAG, by contrast, reliably reflected beta-amyloid levels—one of the hallmark pathologies of AD—as well as objective cognitive impairment; and it predicted imminent progression to dementia. Consequently, structural BAG, in particular, emerges as a promising marker for tracking AD progression and could be valuable for assessing the therapeutic effects of emerging disease-modifying treatments.
Title of the publication
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in: —
Short summary of the paper
In our recent study, we developed a new approach to treat frontotemporal dementia (FTD), a
brain disorder that causes memory loss and changes in behavior. One of the main causes of
FTD is a lack of a protein called progranulin, which helps to protect brain cells. Without enough
progranulin, harmful substances build up in the brain, leading to inflammation and cell death.
To address this, we used a specially designed virus to deliver progranulin to the body. What’s
unique about our method is that it can cross the blood-brain barrier—the natural defense that
prevents most treatments from reaching the brain. Once in the body, the virus makes liver cells
produce progranulin, which travels to the brain and restores its levels, resulting in the clearing
of the harmful substances causing the disease.
We tested this treatment in mice, and the results were promising: brain inflammation decreased,
and the harmful protein buildup was reduced. We also tested the therapy in human brain cells
grown from stem cells mimicking FTD. These experiments showed similar positive effects,
making the treatment approach even more relevant for future use in humans.
In short, this study offers hope for a new way to treat FTD and potentially other brain diseases.
Our approach could make it easier to deliver treatments to the brain without invasive
procedures.
Title of the publication
„What influences life expectancy in people with dementia? Social support as an emerging protective factor“
in: Age and Ageing 53, afae044 (online first). doi: 10.1093/ageing/afae044
Short summary of the paper
It was long believed that the life expectancy of people with dementia primarily depended on the severity of the disease and accompanying conditions. The COVID-19 pandemic has shed light on how important social contact and support are for people with dementia – and how these factors can positively influence the progression of dementia symptoms, or negatively impact it when absent. In this study, we used data from 500 individuals with dementia who were regularly visited at home over a period of up to eight years and investigated how social support affects life expectancy. For the first time, we demonstrate that social support influences the life expectancy of people with dementia – beyond clinical factors. In our study, individuals who reported receiving more social support had a life expectancy that was one year longer. Particularly important was not practical support, but rather emotional support – such as whether someone offers comfort, listens, and accepts the person with dementia as they are. In addition to social support, younger age, female sex, and lower dementia severity (higher cognitive and daily functioning) were associated with a higher life expectancy. Our study makes an important contribution to improving the care of people with dementia in the future: it shows that not only physical and medical needs, but also psychosocial needs must be given greater attention.
Title of the publication
„Data-driven brain atrophy staging in spinocerebellar ataxia type 3″
in: medRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.05.29.24307992
Short summary of the paper
Alzheimer’s disease is highly heterogeneous with previous studies demonstrating significant relationships of its clinical and biological variability. However, it remains unclear whether this heterogeneity can be effectively captured in a memory clinic setting using routinely collected patient data to enable more accurate diagnoses and prognoses.
Using structural MRI from a total of 1592 older adults enrolled in two large-scale memory clinic-based cohorts, Baumeister and colleagues identified two distinct patterns of brain atrophy. Based on these findings, they propose a model capable of classifying individuals by their atrophy subtype—either “limbic-predominant” or “hippocampal-sparing”—and atrophy stage, which is represented as a numeric value ranging from 0 to 10, from a single brain scan.
These classifications are shown to relate to patients’ clinical presentation at the time of the scan. For instance, the limbic-predominant subtype was associated with cognitive impairment primarily affecting memory, while the hippocampal-sparing subtype was linked to more generalized cognitive impairments, including deficits in attention and processing speed. Atrophy classifications were also predictive of patients’ clinical development over a follow-up period of more than four years. Here, especially the limbic-predominant atrophy subtype and higher atrophy stages were strong predictors of declining cognitive functions. Importantly, these predictions could also be made for older adults without manifest cognitive impairment, a key point given the importance of early intervention in light of recent pharmaceutical advances.
Given these results, the proposed model holds significant promise for enhancing the usefulness of structural MRI in a variety of contexts, from routine clinical practice to complex drug trials.
Title of the publication
„Medin co-aggregtes with vascular amyloid-ß in Alzheimer’s disease“
in: Nature, Dezember 2022
Title of the publication
„Impact of low-value medications on quality of life, hospitalization and costs – A longitudinal analysis of patients living with dementia“
in: Alzheimer’s & Dementia (2023;1-12)
Title of the publication
„Long-term diazepam treatment enhances microglial spine engulfment and impairs cognitive performance via the mitochondrial 18kDa translocator protein (TSPO)“
in: NATURE NEUROSCIENCE, March 2022, 317-329
Title of the publication
„Feasibility of a standard cognitive assessment in European academic memory clinics“
in: Alzheimer’s & Dementia (2022; 1-11)
Title of the publication
„Sirtuin-1 sensitive lysine-136 acetylation drives phase separation and pathological aggregaion of TDP-43“
in: NATURE COMMUNICATIONS (2022); 13
Title of the publication
„Microglial activation states drive glucose uptake and FDG-PET alterations in neurodegenerative diseases“
in: Science Translational Medicine 13, eabe5640, 13 October 2021
Title of the publication
„Highly efficient intercellular spreading of protein misfolding mediated by viral ligand-receptor interactions“
in: Nature Communications, (2021)12:5739, October 19, 2021
Title of the publication
„Microglia jointly degrade fibrillar alpha-synuclein cargo by distribution through tunneling nanotubes“
in: CellPress 2021, Cell 184, 5089–5106, September 30, 2021
Title of the publication
„Medin aggregation causes cerebrovascular dysfunction in aging wild-type mice“
in: PNAS, September 22, 2020, vol. 117, no. 38, 23925-23931
Title of the publication
„RhoA drives actin compaction to restrict axon regeneration and astrocyte reactivity after CNS injury“
in: CellPress, 3438 Neuron 109, 3436–3455, November 3, 2021
Title of the publication
„Loss of TREM2 function increases amyloidseeding but reduces plaque-associated ApoE“
in: Nat Neurosci 22, 191–204, January 7, 2019
Short summary of the paper
Alois Alzheimer identified three key hallmarks of the disease: the presence of amyloid plaques and tau tangles, as well as increased microglia – immune cells responsible for destruction of invading pathogens in the brain. The microglial gene TREM2 was identified to play a crucial role in sustaining the microglial response in disease conditions. Using an amyloid plaque depositing mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), I found that that loss of TREM2 function increased early plaque accumulation by preventing microglial clearance of plaques. APOE, the strongest genetic risk factor for AD, plays an essential role in promoting plaque formation and its expression is mainly reported in astrocytes, another regulator of inflammation. My studies showed that not only was APOE induced in microglia around plaques, but was also strongly reduced upon TREM2 deficiency. This suggests therapeutic strategies must consider TREM2-APOE interaction as it may protectively modulate plaque clearance, but in parallel exacerbate amyloid pathology.