Nils Gassen

Neu­ro­home­osta­sis under Stress: Autophagy and Metab­o­lism in stress-relat­ed diseases.

Abstract

Autophagy is an evo­lu­tion­ary con­served cel­lu­lar house­keep­ing process impli­cat­ed in the sur­veil­lance and recy­cling of cel­lu­lar pro­teins and organelles, there­by main­tain­ing cel­lu­lar home­osta­sis and func­tion­ing. Impor­tant­ly, autophagy has been cen­tral­ly linked to stress-relat­ed dis­or­ders and men­tal health. Espe­cial­ly in the brain, synap­tic autophagy has been shown to reg­u­late synapse remod­el­ing and plas­tic­i­ty, appears crit­i­cal to neu­ronal home­osta­sis and via­bil­i­ty, and is direct­ly linked to neu­ronal func­tion­ing and men­tal disorders. 

Con­se­quent­ly, genome-wide and pro­teome-wide asso­ci­a­tion stud­ies have indi­cat­ed a sig­nif­i­cant over-rep­re­sen­ta­tion or impair­ments of autophagy-relat­ed path­ways in mul­ti­ple brain dis­or­ders. In line with these find­ings, autophag­ic dys­func­tion has been shown in sev­er­al stress-relat­ed ani­mal mod­els of men­tal dis­or­ders. How­ev­er, a com­pre­hen­sive analy­sis of the role of autophagy dur­ing stress and stress-relat­ed men­tal dis­or­ders, and an inves­ti­ga­tion of autophagy-induc­ing phar­ma­co­log­i­cal and non-phar­ma­co­log­i­cal inter­ven­tion strate­gies have not been con­duct­ed to date.

In inter­dis­ci­pli­nary approach­es we aim to improve men­tal health and stress resilience by tar­get­ing the cel­lu­lar home­osta­sis and autophagy sys­tem. Lever­ag­ing a bot­tom-up approach that com­bines mech­a­nism-dri­ven neu­ro­science, clin­i­cal stud­ies in patients and healthy sub­jects and inno­v­a­tive tech­nolo­gies, we uncov­ered nov­el mech­a­nisms under­ly­ing stress resilience with regard to pro­tein home­osta­sis and iden­ti­fied solu­tions to pro­mote men­tal health. Togeth­er, our results unlock the full poten­tial and effec­tive use of bio­med­ical research for the devel­op­ment of health-pro­mot­ing interventions.

Biog­ra­phy

Dr. Nils Gassen has a long-stand­ing expe­ri­ence in cel­lu­lar and mol­e­c­u­lar biol­o­gy with in-depth knowl­edge in the fields of cel­lu­lar sig­nal­ing, stress-response and resilience, immune-biol­o­gy and pro­tein home­osta­sis. His mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary and trans­la­tion­al research focus­es on major pro­tein qual­i­ty con­trol mech­a­nisms like autophagy or pro­tea­so­mal degra­da­tion and their role in the stress response and stress-relat­ed dis­eases, the metab­o­lism, the immune response and the defense against viral pathogens. 

Dr. Gassen is expe­ri­enced in estab­lish­ing defined, exper­i­men­tal and inter­ven­tion­al human cohorts includ­ing clin­i­cal tri­als with depressed patients. Dr. Gassen and his research group were able for the first time to link stress-relat­ed dis­or­ders to autophagy. Dr. Gassen has co-authored more than 50 arti­cles with an H‑index of 30, cit­ed over 12.000 times. His arti­cles have been pub­lished in renowned jour­nals as Sci­ence Advances, PloS Med­i­cine, Nature Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Cell Reports and Mol­e­c­u­lar Psy­chi­a­try. He received numer­ous hon­ors and was recent­ly award­ed as Vis­it­ing Pro­fes­sor at Char­ité, Berlin.