
Project
Identifying Biomarkers of Subjective Cognitive Decline in Aging Adults
Neurodegenerative diseases are an increasing global health challenge worldwide. These diseases are associated at the molecular level with misfolding and self-assembly of protein into so-called amyloid structures. Recent advances observed that diet and prebiotics may slow down the progression of cognitive decline, possibly by influencing the molecular processes of protein self-assembly. However, how protein self-assembly contributes to disease and its relationship with nutritional factors remains elusive.
My research will focus on identifying biomarkers of subjective cognitive decline in ageing adults in relationship to nutritional factors, such as prebiotics uptakes, through analyzing the chemical states and structure information of amyloid formation in their blood biofluids. An emerging microfluidic spray technique will be utilized for sample preparation, then state-of-art technologies such as infrared spectroscopy (IR), Optical Photothermal IR Spectroscopy (OPTIR) and Atomic Force Microscopy-IR Spectroscopy (AFM-IR) will be applied for characterization of the biofluids from the micron to the nanoscale. Digital technologies, including AI and machine learning, will be finally applied to process data and extract key biomarkers of amyloid state as a function of cognitive decline and prebiotics intake.
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