Rosetrees Interdisciplinary workshop: Neurodegenerative diseases of the brain

Wednesday 10 February 2021
Virtual Meeting via Zoom

Co-sponsored by:

Workshop Overview

Neurodegenerative diseases in the brain represent a wide range of different underlying pathologies with different clinical sequelae. Therapeutic interventions are currently relatively limited, reflecting the complexity of the diseases. Imaging with different, often combined, modalities (including CT, MRI, PET and SPECT) is a well-established clinical diagnostic tool, whilst imaging at a cellular and molecular level using animal models has also contributed significantly to our understanding of both the detailed anatomical structure and functional behaviour of the brain. Application of advanced statistical techniques and artificial intelligence has accelerated the extraction of detailed and clinically-useful information from images, though combining information from these different techniques across different temporal and spatial scales is challenging.

Groups based in physics, mathematics and computational science are increasingly engaged in developing novel tools and techniques which may be applied to the brain and neurodegenerative diseases, including the use of network theory to develop simple models of brain function, applying the understanding of soft matter and polymer physics to the process of protein aggregation, exploring the role of liquid-liquid phase separation in Alzheimer’s disease, and developing models of blood flow and mass transport in the brain using computational fluid dynamics.
​
A single workshop in this wide-ranging and developing area will necessarily need to focus on a limited number of particular topics, though it is hoped that in so doing, the value of interdisciplinary approaches to other aspects of the field will be reinforced. The workshop will bring together researchers from the physical, biological and clinical sciences to focus on interdisciplinary approaches to the imaging of neurodegenerative diseases of the brain, including how multiscale imaging information may be combined with other biomarkers in order to better understand and model the extent, nature and impact of neurodegenerative disease. 

Who should attend?

We invite participation by academic, industrial and clinical research scientists in the UK who are interested in the central goal of generating new collaborative research interactions at the physical/life sciences interface focused on neurodegenerative disease research. There is particular encouragement for the participation of the health care professionals.

Provisional Programme

This provisional programme is based on UK time. 

Day 1	Wednesday 10 February 2021
9.20	Professor Stephen Smye (Leeds/KCL) 'Welcome and Introduction to the Physics of Medicine network'
9.35	Professor Paul Matthews (UKDRI, Imperial) 'Interdisciplinary approaches to some of the grand challenges in neurodegenerative diseases of the brain'
Session one	Answering the questions that matter - the challenges of neurodegenerative diseases of the brain, chaired by Paul Matthews
10.00	Professor James Rowe (Cambridge) 'Variants, variance and veracity: clinical challenges for dementia research'
​10.25	​Professor Craig Ritchie (Edinburgh) 'Interdisciplinary approaches to developing new therapeutics'
10.45	​Professor Heidi Johansen-Berg (Oxford)  ‘Imaging in neurodegeneration – opportunities and challenges’  ​​​
11.05	Speaker panel Q & A ​​
​11.35	Refreshment Break​​
Value	​
Session Two	Interdisciplinary approaches to measurements and models, chaired by Karl Friston (before lunch) and John O'Brien (after lunch)
11.50	Professor John Gallacher (Oxford) 'Multi-modal data integration and the UK Dementias Platform' ​
12.10	Professor Henrik Zetterberg (UK Dementia Research Institute, UCL, and Gothenberg ) 'Biomarkers for Alzheimer's disease; amyloid, tau and beyond' ​
12.30	Dr Ivan Koychev (Oxford) 'Novel scalable technologies for pre-clinical detection of dementia'
12.50	Dr Laura Parkes (Manchester) 'Novel imaging of microvascular dysfunction and its role in neurodegeneration'
​13.10	Lunch
14.00	Professor Zoe Kourtzi (Cambridge) 'Machine Learning for Predictive Prognostic Trajectories in Dementia' ​​​
14.20​	​Dr Viola Priesemann​ (​MPI Göttingen) 'What can statistical physics tell us about living neural networks?'
14.40	Dr Neil Oxtoby (UCL) 'Top-down and bottom-up multimodal computational models of Alzheimer’s disease progression' ​​​
​15.00	Speaker panel Q&A
Session Three	​Interdisciplinary funding opportunities​​, chaired by Professor Stephen Smye
15.30	Wellcome Trust  (Dr Sarah Lloyd), Alzheimer’s Society (Dr Fiona Carragher), Alzheimer’s Research UK (Dr Susan Kohlhass) and Rosetrees Trust (Dr Vineeth Rajkumar) 'Available Funding opportunities' ​​
16.00	Q & A​
16.10	Concluding remarks and meeting close from Professor Stephen Smye
​16.15	​Virtual meeting social meet and greet - via Wonder (link provided within meeting)

Workshop Publication

Neurodegenerative disease - https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsif.2022.0406

Workshop Recording

A recording of this meeting is now available via our YouTube channel.

Session One

Session Two

Session Three