Fighting Parkinson's disease: 1.25 million Euros for young Tübingen-based researcher

Michela Deleidi is studying human ageing processes and age-related neurological disorders with a particular focus on Parkinson's disease. She wants to employ stem cells from patients affected by the disease and investigate how the immune system and mitochondria, the powerhouses of our cells, interact with each other.

This should give more information about how inflammation in Parkinson's disease plays a role in the development of the disease.

“The funding will enable me to boost my efforts to further understand the causes of the disease for patient stratification based on specific genetic risk,” says Michela Deleidi. “My motivation is to find strategies for the early detection and individualized treatment of this complex chronic disorder.”

Since 2011, she is working in Tübingen. Deleidi had a Research Fellowship of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and worked at the Department of Neurodegenerative Diseases at the University of Tübingen. She completed her PhD at the Graduate School of Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience in Tübingen.

Michela Deleidi studied medicine and neurology at the Medical School Vita-Salute University of Milan, Italy. Her research interests mainly focused on the role of inflammation in neurological disorders.

During her graduate studies, she became fascinated by stem cell therapy in neurodegenerative diseases. For this reason, shortly after completing her clinical training in Neurology, she moved to the Boston Harvard Medical School, USA.

Promoting young talents

250 young researchers from all over the world applied for the current round of promotions for Helmholtz Young Investigators Groups. 17 of them were selected as new group leaders by an international panel of experts in a stringent competitive procedure comprising several stages.

These young researchers work at Helmholtz Centres but are also involved in university teaching and have good prospects of permanent employment in the case of good performance.

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