Clinical Alzheimer Research

• ALSOVA – A 5-Year Alzheimer’s Disease Follow-Up Study
  Professor Anne Koivisto
• Clinical Alzheimer Research
  Professor Hilkka Soininen
• Clinical Drug Research 
  Research Director Merja Hallikainen
• UEF – Nordic-UK Brain Network  (UEF-NBN)
  Associate Professor Alina Solomon
• Molecular Genetics of Alzheimer’s Disease
  Professor Mikko Hiltunen 

Clinical Alzheimer Research groups have a wide expertise in clinical and population based cohorts, risk factors, neuropsychology, biomarkers, genetics, brain imaging, and clinical interventions and trials in AD and mild cognitive impairment.

Research groups have been involved in national and international consortia such as FINGER, ADDNeuroMed,  PREDICTND, LipiDiDiet, HATICE, EMIF, GWAS-consortia as well as Joint Program of Neurodegenerative Diseases (JPND) MIND-AD.

Groups have trained staff, and state of the art facilities, extensive administrative experience and track record of leading large research projects.  They have also clinical and risk factor data, samples of blood, CSF and DNA collected in cross-sectional and longitudinal studies in memory diseases.

Biomarker laboratory is run by Sanna-Kaisa Herukka, MD, PhD. The Neurology Unit has over twenty years’ experience in CSF biomarker studies. There is a large biobank including CSF and blood samples from controls and patients with neurodegenerative diseases, particularly AD. In 2005, we established a national biomarker laboratory service available for Finnish physicians and hospitals.

The quality management system of the laboratory is based on the international standards for quality management and for clinical laboratories. The quality management system has been audited by laboratory professionals from another testing laboratory and internal audits are performed according to the audit program of UEF. The laboratory also takes part in several large scale international studies on CSF biomarkers for AD.

Research Director

Hilkka Soininen Professor, MD, PhD Institute of Clinical Medicine Neurology University of Eastern Finland P.O. Box 1627 FI-70211 Kuopio, Finland +358 40 573 5749 hilkka.soininen (at) uef.fi

Research Group

Senior Investigators and Postdocs

• Mariagnese Barbera, PhD / HATICE study
• Ilona Hallikainen, PhD, Psychologist
• Merja Hallikainen, Research Director, MD, PhD / clinical studies
• Anette Hall, MSc, DSc (Tech) / bioinformatics and data analysis
• Sanna-Kaisa Herukka, MD, MSc, PhD / biomarkers of neurodegenerative disorders
• Valtteri Julkunen, Md, PhD, Clinical Lecturer
• Anne Koivisto, MD, PhD, Adjunct Professor / clinical studies, genetics, ALSOVA-study coordinator and principal investigator

PhD Students

• Olli Jääskeläinen, MSc
• Antti Luikku
• Teemu Paajanen, MPsych
• Timo Pekkala, MSc
• Anna Rosenberg, MSc
• Ruth Stephen, MSc (Public Health)

Technicians

• Tarja Lappalainen, RN
• Päivi Räsänen, senior laboratory technician
• Päivi Siuro, RN