A project by Dr. Julia Heiby from the Leibniz Institute on Aging - Fritz Lipmann Institute in Jena will receive further funding. Julia, together with Alessandro Ori, received our 13th NCL Research Award earlier. Alessandro has meanwhile taken on a new position in the USA and Julia will continue to focus on LysoIP experiments using isogenic CLN3 KO and wildtype ARPE-19 cells as well as CLN3 KO mice (in collaboration with Prof. Monther Abu-Remaileh, Stanford University, USA). Goal is to identify the proteomic changes and signature of CLN3 lysosomes, and to test promising compounds to what extent these can normalize the lysosomal proteome of CLN3 KO cells to that in wild-type cells. Given the recent progress in using non-tagged lysoIP on CLN3 patient PBMCs, this work holds promise for identifying pharmacodynamic readouts (biomarkers) that might be applicable also in patients treated systemically with promising therapeutic compounds. 

We wish Julia lots of success in continuing her scientific endeavour!

Our funding partner is the Bijou Brigitte Foundation, which we would like to thank for their valuable support.