We are committed to deepening our understanding of Parkinson’s disease (PD) and related neurodegenerative disorders by focusing on non-motor symptoms, mixed pathologies and other factors that extend beyond the brain. It is our mission to establish the most comprehensive animal models of PD subtypes for preclinical validation of disease-modifying treatments and early biomarker development. Our research therefore centers on modeling the early non-motor disease stage to capture the critical window where intervention would be most effective.

Age-related co-pathologies and cardiometabolic changes are inevitable components of biological aging and likely modulators of neurodegenerative disease mechanisms, thereby affecting the severity and spectrum of motor and non-motor symptoms. However, the vast majority of current PD animal models ignores these critical biological risk factors, limiting their translational relevance for understanding disease heterogeneity and developing targeted interventions.

Our central hypothesis is that disease onset site (body or brain), pathology type, and cardiometabolic risk factors are all interdependent determinants of the clinical phenotype in PD.

Our unique methodology integrates rodent models that recapitulate the body-first and brain-first disease onset paradigms with the clinical complexity of cardiometabolic ageing and co-pathologies, ensuring translational relevance for subtype-specific therapeutic interventions. We employ a multi-disciplinary approach by combining: 

1. assessment of multi-system dysfunction using PET imaging of brain, heart, and gut;

2. in-depth characterization of pathology type (distribution, morphology, cellular environment) across organs using histology, spectrometry, and electron microscopy;

3. morphological and functional measures of cardiac and enteric function;

4. translational validation using patient post-mortem tissue and peripheral biopsies

By employing a whole-body perspective, the Van Den Berge group seeks to move the frontiers of PD research from a brain-only to a multi-organ disease focus.

The ultimate goal is to translate insights from animal models into improved diagnostic tools and early biomarkers for personalized, subtype-specific interventions, ultimately enhancing outcomes for patients with PD and related disorders.

We are currently seeking master thesis students to investigate pathology type and cellular environment across different organs in PD subtypes. This project is conducted in collaboration with associate professor Thomas Boesen (cryo-EM facility, iNano).