I aim to (1) achieve early detection of synucleinopathies (Parkinson's disease, dementia with Lewy bodies, multiple system atrophy, Alzheimer's disease with Lewy-body pathology) and other protein-aggregation diseases, and (2) label-free, high-resolution microscopy – both through the development of novel vibrational spectroscopy methods. By applying these techniques to detect amyloid-like aggregation and further optimizing them, I want to contribute to achieving (1) disease detection and stratification before symptoms arise, so that subjects can be optimally selected for trials and – in the future – for disease-specific therapies, and so that the future drug efficacy can be monitored, and (2) the development of novel drugs in model systems like cell lines, organoids, slice cultures, and (e.g. skin) tissues – the latter through label-free monitoring of amyloid formation, as the incorporation of fluorescent labels in this context has been shown to heavily affect the process under study: protein (dis)aggregation.

Vibrational spectroscopy and microscopy

Label-free imaging

Protein aggregation; amyloid formation

Two-dimensional infrared spectroscopy (2DIR)

Optical photothermal infrared microscopy (OPTIR)

Vibrational sum-frequency generation (VSFG)

Vibrational circular dichroism (VCD)

Spectral modeling of vibrational spectra (see GitHub - VibrationalSpectroscopyCalculations/Visca: Analysis code for vibrational spectroscopy calculations )

Alpha-synuclein

Synucleinopathies

Parkinson's disease