Bio-Techne Go Everywhere Travel Grant - January Recipient Selected!

Bio-Techne’s Go Everywhere Travel Grant Program awards $1000 USD (or equivalent) to one researcher each month to attend the meeting of their choice. This grant program allows the researcher to attend more targeted meetings in their field and provides funding to support both small and large scientific associations that promote discovery and collaboration.

The recipient of the January 2019 'Go Everywhere Travel Grant' is Mattia Volta, a Senior Researcher in the Institute for Biomedicine at the Eurac Research in Bolzano, Italy.

Mattia has chosen to apply the grant to attend the World Parkinson Congress 2019 in Kyto, Japan on June 4 – June 7, 2019!

Mattia Volta, a Senior Researcher in the Institute for Biomedicine at the Eurac Research in Bolzano, Italy is the January 2019 recipient of the Bio-Techne Go Everywhere Travel Grant.

My research team focuses on the molecular mechanisms that might underlie Parkinson´s disease pathogenesis, using genetics and genomics to provide insights into cellular pathways that become dysfunctional and eventually lead to neurodegeneration. In particular, we are interested in the modulation of the autophagy-lysosome pathway by LRRK2 and alpha-synuclein, two proteins critically linked to the etiology and neuropathology of Parkinson´s disease. We have found that mutant LRRK2 impairs the functionality of the lysosomes, rendering the cells more susceptible to accumulation of intracellular aggregate. We use pharmacological kinase inhibitors (e.g. MLi-2) to prove specificity of these effects and rescue the deficits. In addition, we use the ProteinSimple WES system to analyze levels of phosphoproteins involved in the signaling pathway, such as Rab10 and LRRK2 itself.

At the World Parkinson Congress 2019 in Kyoto, I will be presenting these results and the role of a novel genomic risk factor (currently confidential) in modulating this specific pathway. Lastly and thanks to a collaboration with Prof. Martin Lévesque (Laval University, Canada), we have validated the ability of our target in preventing alpha-synuclein-mediated neurotoxicity via viralmediated delivery in the mouse brain. Collectively, we aim at describing novel cellular pathways and their key players, with the dual objective of clarifying the disease process and nominating novel targets for neuroprotective therapy.

Bio-Techne and our brands are proud to support Mattia’s work and the work of the many researchers that have applied to our travel grant program so far this year. If you are interested in applying for any of our travel grants, please go to www.rndsystems.com/travel.