Neuro-SysMed Seminar – Mathias Toft

Speaker: Professor Mathias Toft from the University of Oslo / Oslo University Hospital

Title: "Insights into Parkinson's disease: From genetic associations to functional mechanisms"

Place: The auditorium in Armauer Hansens Hus (campus Haukeland University Hospital, Bergen)

Time: Wednesday December 13 at 11:30–13:00 (lunch 11:30–12:00).

Registration: please use this link

Abstract: Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWAS) have elucidated the genetic components of Parkinson's disease (PD). However, translating these results into an interpretable, mechanistic understanding of the disease etiology remains a major challenge in the field. In this presentation, I will provide an overview of our approaches to prioritize putative causal genetic variants. The results of studies of polygenic risk scores and the relationships to clinical traits will be discussed. Further, the results of recent transcriptomic and epigenetic studies will be presented, focusing on how these findings can be translated for clinical applications. 

Mathias Toft is Head of the Department of Neurology, Oslo University Hospital and Professor of neurology at the University of Oslo. Prof. Toft is a clinical neurologist and researcher specialized neurodegenerative disorders, in particular studies of Parkinson’s disease. He studied medicine at the University of Tübingen, Germany. His doctoral degree from NTNU was focused on genetic studies of Parkinson’s disease, and the majority of the studies were carried out at the Mayo Clinic in the United States. More recently he has performed clinical and genomic studies of movement disorders. He is currently leader of the research group Movement disorders and Neurodegeneration.

Chair: Professor Charalampos Tzoulis

Langage: English