PhD defence Marianna Rizzo

Keywords: Alzheimer’s disease, Lewy body disease, Biomarkers, Proteomics 

"Biomarkers in Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body disease: Disease mechanisms and shared pathways"

Dementia is a major global healthcare challenge, and effective treatments are urgently needed. Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body disease represent two of the most common causes of dementia. Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body disease are thought to share partly overlapping disease mechanisms, but these mechanisms remain poorly understood. This hampers the development of effective treatments that stop or reverse the biological progression of the diseases. Therefore, this thesis aimed to investigate the unique and shared disease mechanisms of Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body disease by analyzing brain proteins in the cerebrospinal fluid and through brain scans. A key aspect of the research described in this thesis was the leveraging and building of pooled datasets from different European centers. The findings of this thesis provide crucial insights into the biological processes underlying Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body disease, and offer implications for future research, clinical practice, and treatment development.

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