Back in 1901, German psychiatrist Alois Alzheimer described his first case of what later became known as Alzheimer's disease. Over a century later, we've learned a lot about the molecular processes that lead to neurodegeneration and subsequent memory loss, but many things are still to be discovered.

As a result, an effective therapy hasn't been found yet. But the future is looking brighter. Two VIB professors who have been focusing on the hereditary form of the disease tell the long story of Alzheimer's research.

Hot on the heels of VIB's molecular neuroscience research, VIB managing director Jo Bury and imec director Gilbert Declerck invited the brightest minds in Flanders from both VIB and imec to come up with the next big idea in exploring the functioning of the brain.

“We put them together in a board room for two brainstorming sessions and - by manner of speaking - didn’t let them out until they came up with something really crazy,” Bury recalls with a broad smile. “You wouldn’t believe how quickly they emerged.” On that day in 2008 the earliest beginnings of Neuro Electronics Research Flanders, or NERF, were firmly taking root.

From ALS to Alzheimer’s disease or amyloidosis, misfolded proteins cause havoc throughout our organs causing serious and often incurable disorders.  

Devoting their entire careers to understanding the mechanisms gearing protein folding and misfolding, Joost Schymkowitz and Frederic Rousseau found a way to turn this giant problem into an ingenious solution. What if we could use what we know about aggregation to target the bad guys instead?  

Flash forward about a decade and spin-off Aelin Therapeutics is developing a new class of antibiotics as well as radically new cancer treatments through targeted protein aggregation—two of just many possible applications of an entirely novel therapeutic platform called Pept-in™.

The road that links basic research to the development and commercialization of life-changing therapies can be a long one. In the case of Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease (CMT), every single day counts. This debilitating illness is driven by the degeneration of peripheral nerve axons, causing muscle weakness, foot deformities and sensory abnormalities. 

Thanks to the pioneering research of scientists at the VIB-KU Leuven Center for Brain & Disease Research and the creation of VIB spin-off Augustine Therapeutics in 2019, there is a promising light at the end of the tunnel for CMT and neuropathy patients with unmet medical needs.