Meet the ADAPTED Researchers - Dr. Agustín Ruiz, Fundació ACE
What is your role within the ADAPTED Project?
I am the coordinator of this wonderful project.
Tell us a bit more about the organisation/company you work with:
Fundació ACE, Institut Català de Neurociències Aplicades (ACE) (http://www.fundacioace.org) is a non-profit organization located in Barcelona, Spain. ACE was registered and declared a welfare institution by the Government of Catalonia in 1995. Fundació ACE's mission is to manage dementia in a multidisciplinary way and it has become a global reference in the treatment and management of patients with cognitive disorders. Fundació ACE implemented its Memory Clinic in 1996 with the goal of addressing the increasing demands for treatment and education for dementia patients and offering personal attention to them and their families. The Memory Clinic currently comprises a multidisciplinary team of clinicians, neuropsychologists and social workers who attend over 7.000 patients every year.
Fundació ACE has made important contributions to the field of neurodegeneration. It is also actively researching on preclinical and prodromal AD and has collaborated in the evaluation of multiple innovative therapeutic approaches for dementia. Its lines of research comprise diverse fields such as genomics, genome-wide association studies, molecular epidemiology, phenomics, in vivo biomarkers, neuroimaging, social legal and ethical research, robotics, and brain training.
What have been some of the biggest achievements/breakthroughs so far in the project?
Generation of APOE Isogenic IPSCs lines for translational research.
Generation of an Integrative bioinformatics pipeline for further research in APOE genotypes.
Generation of Human CSF/Plasma dataset ready to go for research and validation purposes.
What excites you most about the project?
To identify the secrets of APOE alleles and its molecular mechanisms associated to Alzheimer’s Disease
What are your expectations for ADAPTED
To delineate a research model useful for translational research and drug discovery
What are your hopes for the future treatment of Alzheimer’s disease?
1. Something to combat cognition decline of affected patients
2. Something to reduce the risk of AD in APOE carriers
What do you think EU collaborative research projects have to offer?
Accelerating research on important clues observed during IMI projects
Flexibility to re-wire the projects when necessary
