Pericytes in Parkinson’s disease

The research aims to determine the role of pericytes in Parkinson’s disease pathology. First, we want to discover how LRRK2 mutation affects the function of pericytes and how these changes reflect on the blood-brain barrier. Later we will assess the effect of pro-inflammatory environment on LRRK2 mutant pericytes and find out what is the synergistic effect of pericytes with LRRK2 mutation and glial cells on the blood-brain barrier function. 

Publications

Albert, K., Kälvälä, S., Hakosalo, V., Syvänen, V., Krupa, P., Niskanen, J., Peltonen, S., Sonninen, T.-M. & Lehtonen, Š. (2022). Cellular Models of Alpha-Synuclein Aggregation: What Have We Learned and Implications for Future Study. Biomedicines 10, 2649 

Wu, Y.-C., Sonninen, T.-M., Peltonen, S., Koistinaho, J., and Lehtonen, Š. (2021). Blood–Brain Barrier and Neurodegenerative Diseases—Modeling with iPSC-Derived Brain Cells. International Journal of Molecular Sciences 22, 7710.