Professor Patrik Verstreken is the Scientific Director & Group Leader at the VIB-KU Leuven Center for Brain & Disease Research (Belgium), and a professor at the Department of Neurosciences at KU Leuven.

Patrik’s research aims at deepening our understanding of synaptic function in health and neurodegenerative disease. Using advanced iPSC-derived human neuronal circuits, rodent models and fruit flies, his work has focused on key proteins, lipids and mitochondria that regulate synaptic activity and how these molecules and organelles are misregulated in Parkinson’s disease. This research has led to the discovery of specific presynaptic and organellar defects in Tauopathies and Parkinson’s disease and in strategies how to suppress these defects.