Organization

Prof. Volker Haucke, iSAB President, Full Professor of Molecular Pharmacology, Freie Universität Berlin & Director at the Leibniz Forschungsinstitut für Molekulare Pharmakologie (FMP), Berlin, Germany.

Web site

Twitter  (@VolkerHaucke)

Key words: Neurotransmission, Cell signaling, Exo-endocytic membrane dynamics, Optical imaging, Neurodegeneration, Epilepsy

Volker Haucke received his PhD summa cum laude in 1997 from the Biozentrum of the University of Basel, Switzerland, for his work on mitochondrial biogenesis in the group of Gottfried (Jeff) Schatz. Following postdoctoral work as a fellow of EMBO and the Human Frontier Science Program in the group of Pietro De Camilli at Yale University School of Medicine he started his own laboratory at the University of Göttingen. He was appointed as a full professor of biochemistry at the Freie Universiät Berlin in 2003. Since 2012 Volker Haucke is director at the Leibniz Forschungsinstitut für Molekulare Pharmakologie (FMP) and professor of molecular pharmacology at the Freie Universität Berlin and a member of the NeuroCure Cluster of Excellence.

The focus of research in his laboratory is the dissection of the molecular mechanisms of endocytosis and endolysosomal membrane dynamics and its role in the nervous system with a focus on neurotransmission. The laboratory uses a wide range of technologies that include biochemical and cell biological approaches, electrophysiology, chemical biology, super-resolution and electron microscopy as well as genetic manipulations at the organismic level in vivo. The overarching goal of these studies is to mechanistically understand how exo-endocytosis and the endolysosomal system contribute to the development and maintenance of the nervous system function and how dysfunction may lead to neurological diseases. Among his major discoveries are the identification of novel lipid conversion mechanisms that control exo- and endocytosis and cell signaling, the dissection of a novel pathway of synaptic vesicle retrieval and reformation, and the identification of a lysosome related vesicle as a presynaptic precursor organelle.

Prof. Haucke is a distinguished scientist whose contributions have been recognized by his election as a Member of Leopoldina, the German National Academy of Science (Halle), a Member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Science, the Avanti Award of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) 2017, and the Feldberg Prize for Research in Physiology and Pharmacology 2020. Since 2014 he is an elected member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO).

Prof. Costantino Iadecola, Anne Parrish Titzell Professor of Neurology, Director and Chair, Feil Family Brain and Mind Research Institute, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, NY, USA.

Web site

Twitter (@costantinoiade1) 

Key words: Cerebral circulation, Cerebral ischemia, Stroke, Alzheimer's disease, Vascular dementia

Costantino Iadecola, M.D. is the Director and Chair of the Feil Family Brain and Mind Research Institute and the Anne Parrish Titzell Professor of Neurology at Weill Cornell Medicine.

His research focuses on the basic mechanisms of neurovascular function and on the cellular and molecular alterations underlying ischemic brain injury, neurodegeneration and other conditions associated with cognitive impairment.  A pioneer in establishing the concept of neurovascular unit, Dr. Iadecola has championed the involvement of neurovascular dysfunction in neurodegenerative diseases, and the role of innate immunity and the microbiome in ischemic brain injury. 

He has published over 350 papers in peer-reviewed journals and plays a leadership role in research organizations and funding agencies in the US and abroad. He has been involved, as editor or editorial board member, in several journals including Circulation research, PNAS, Stroke, Hypertension, the Journal of Neuroscience, and the Annals of Neurology.

Dr. Iadecola has received the McHenry Award from the American Academy of Neurology, two Jacob Javits Awards from the National Institutes of Health, the Willis Award - the highest honor in stroke research bestowed by the American Heart Association (AHA), the Zenith Fellow Award from the Alzheimer’s Association, and the Excellence Award in Hypertension Research (Novartis) from the Hypertension Council of the AHA.  In 2015, Dr. Iadecola was elected to the Association of American Physicians and in 2019 was honored as Distinguished Scientist of the AHA. In 2019, Clarivate Analytics (Web of Science) listed Dr. Iadecola as one of world’s “Highly Cited Researchers” for ranking in the top one percent of the most-cited authors in the field of neuroscience and behavioral sciences.

Prof. Rohini Kuner, Director of the Department of Molecular Pharmacology, Institute of Pharmacology of the Medical Faculty Heidelberg, Germany.

Web site

Key words: Chronic pain diseases, Nociceptors, Spinal neurons, Neurotransmitters and neuromodulators, Cancer, Inflammation, Structural plasticity, Pharmacology

Prof. Dr Rohini Kuner directs the molecular pharmacology department at the Institute of Pharmacology of the Medical Faculty Heidelberg. In the framework of the DFG-funded Emmy Noether programme she established her own, independent research group and earned her habilitation in 2005 at the Medical Faculty Heidelberg. In 2006 Rohini Kuner was appointed to a full professorship for Pharmacology and Toxicology and in 2009 she became the director of the Institute of Pharmacology at the Medical Faculty Heidelberg.

She is known for her work on the neurobiological foundations of pain perception, processing and encoding, as well as underlying neuronal plasticity in connection with the emergence of chronic pain.

Prof. Kuner is the spokesperson and leading scientist at the Heidelberg pain consortium, a collaborative research centre funded by the German Research Foundation (SFB1158), which comprises research activities from over 40 researcher groups. She is the chairperson of the board of directors of the Chica and Heinz Schaller Foundation to promote biomedical research.

The emphasis of Prof. Kuner’s research lies on the molecular mechanisms underlying the chronification of pain and the development of new strategies for pharmacological treatments.

They aim at understanding molecular mechanisms underlying chronic pain resulting from long-lasting inflammation or cancer. A major focus is laid on addressing signalling mechanisms which underlie activity-dependent changes in primary sensory neurons transmitting pain (nociceptors) and their synapses in the spinal dorsal horn. They current work spans molecular, genetic, behavioural, electrophysiological and imaging approaches in vitro as well as in vivo in rodent models of pathological pain.

Prof. Michela Matteoli, Professor of Pharmacology at Hunimed University, Director of the Italian CNR Institute of Neuroscience, and Chair of the Neuroscience Program at Humanitas Clinical and Research Hospital, Rozzano, Milan, Italy.

Web site

Twitter (@Michela30586273)

Key words: synapse, dendritic spines, microglia, TREM2, immune-synaptoptahies

Michela Matteoli obtained her PhD in from the University of Pisa in 1989. Afterwards, she was EMBO postdoctoral fellow at the Yale School of Medicine, Department of Cell Biology, and Visiting Scientist at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. She established her lab in Milano as Researcher of the Italian National Research Council. In 2002 she became Associate Professor and in 2011 Full Professor of Pharmacology at the Università di Milano. Presently, she is Professor of Pharmacology at Hunimed University and Chair of the Neuroscience Program at the Clinical and Research Hospital. From 2014 to 2018 and from 2019 she is Director of the CNR Institute of Neuroscience, a prestigious Italian scientific Institution formed by 5 research sections, located in Pisa, Milano, Padova, Cagliari and Parma.

M Matteoli is Member of EMBO and of Academia Europæa. She is in the International Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) of the Paris School of Neuroscience and past member of the Armenise Harvard Foundation. She participates to the Scientific Council of the Umberto Veronesi Foundation. She was awarded in 2013 with the Mid Career Mentoring Award by the journal Nature, in 2015 with the Athena Award for scientific merits, and in 2019 with the Feltrinelli Award for Physiology, Biochemistry and Pharmacology.

Her research focuses on the synapse and how the immune system affects its formation and function. She authored about 160 publications, her h-index is 57 (Scopus) and she is in the list of Top Italian Scientists. Among the most recent contributions, her work showing that lack of TREM2 from microglia impairs synaptic pruning and causes sociability defects (Filipello, Morini et al. Immunity 2018, Impact Factor 22.8) has been selected among the best 10 papers of Immunity in 2018. Her group has also demonstrated that phosphatidylserine is a tag for synapses to be eliminated by microglial TREM2 (Scott-Hewitt, Perrucci et al., EMBO J. 2020) and that inflammation affects proteins involved in synapse function (Tomasoni et al, eLife 2017; Corradini et al., Biol. Psy. 2018). These findings have opened a novel avenue of research, centered around the new concept of immune-synaptopathies.

Prof.Carol Tamminga, Lou and Ellen McGinley Distinguished Chair and McKenzie Chair in Psychiatry, University of Texas Southwestern, Dallas, TX, USA.

Web site

Key words: Schizophrenia, Risk factors, Human Brain Imaging, Human Translational Neuroscience, Postmortem Brain Research, Psychopathology, Pathophysiology, Neurocognition, Pharmacology

Dr. Tamminga holds the Lou and Ellen McGinley Distinguished Chair and the McKenzie Chair in Psychiatry at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School and is the Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and the Chief of the Translational Neuroscience Division in Schizophrenia at UTSW.

Dr. Tamminga is currently a member of NIMH’s National Advisory Board and has served on the Board of Scientific Counselors of the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Institute of Drug Abuse, as Council member and President of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, as a Member and Chair of the Psychopharmacological Drugs Advisory Committee of the FDA, as well as consultant for the Orphan Products Development Review Group, FDA.  She is a member of the Advisory Board of the Brain and Behavioral Research Foundation (NARSAD).

Dr. Tamminga was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Sciences in 1998 and has served on several IOM committees in that capacity.

The goal of Dr. Tamminga’s research is to examine and understand the mechanisms underlying schizophrenia, especially its most prominent symptoms, psychosis and memory dysfunction, in order to build rational treatments for the illness. She evaluates the function of the living human brain in individuals with and without schizophrenia, using brain imaging techniques.  Then, building on this knowledge, she uses human postmortem brain tissue to translate the functional alterations from the living human patient into molecular observations of the illness. Her ultimate goal is to base novel pharmacologies for psychosis and memory dysfunction on these observations and to use the altered in vivo imaging and postmortem molecular changes as biomarkers and targets for identifying animal models of disease and novel active pharmaceuticals.

Prof. Matthijs Verhage, Head of the Functional Genomics, department of Clinical Genetics, VU University Medical Center, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Web site

Key words: SNARE, Neurotransmitter, Calcium, Trafficking, Secretion

Prof. Matthijs Verhage is full professor since 2000 and head of the Department of Functional Genomics at the Vrije Universiteit (VU) and VU University Medical Center (VUmc) in Amsterdam. In 2003 he became the first chairman of the Center for Neurogenomics and Cognitive Research (CNCR, established in 2002). He was co-founder and vice chair of the Dutch NeuroBsik Mouse Phenomics consortium.

Matthijs Verhage is co-founder and partner of several European research consortia (EU-Synapse, EuroSpin, SynSys), member of national and international grant committees, editorial boards and governmental advisory boards. He is also consultant/scientific advisor for Life Science companies in The Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland and Japan. In 2012 he received the ERC Advanced Grant of the European Research Council.

The department studies the presynaptic nerve terminal in health and disease and also contributes to the understanding of complex traits in rodents and humans. In their studies of the nerve terminal, they aim to understand the gene networks that orchestrate the secretion of diverse chemical signals such as classical neurotransmitters from synaptic vesicles and large dense core vesicles. In their complex trait studies they aim to systematically dissect complex behavior, especially cognition, in terms of the underlying network of latent traits, gene networks, genetic variation and environmental factors and to understand disease mechanisms.