Dr. Mathias Jucker

Biography

Mathias Jucker, Ph.D., is Professor of Cellular Neurology at the Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research at the University of Tübingen and the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) in Tübingen, Germany. He earned his Ph.D. at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in  Zürich. His main areas of research are the cellular and molecular mechanisms responsible for brain aging and Alzheimer’s disease. He has made groundbreaking discoveries in the fundamental mechanisms underlying neurodegenerative diseases, such as the role of self-propagating pathogenic protein aggregates in Alzheimer’s disease and other disorders of the aging brain. Noteworthy are his efforts to translate fundamental research into clinical studies and his commitment to the Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer Network (DIAN). He is the speaker of the Graduate School of Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience in Tübingen. For his research he has received several honors and prizes, most recently the Science Prize for Dementia Research of the Academy of Sciences, Hamburg, Germany (2013), and the MetLife Award for Medical Research of the MetLife Foundation, New York (2014).

Research Interest

The focus of our research is on the cellular and molecular mechanisms of brain aging and age-related neurodegenerative diseases, with a special emphasis on the pathogenesis of Alzheimer´s disease and other cerebral amyloidoses. We do primarily basic research with a focus on preclinical investigations of disease mechanisms. To foster the translation of our research to clinical applications, we coordinate the international Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer Network (DIAN) study in Germany, which aims to understand the rare genetic forms of Alzheimer's disease by longitudinal analysis of gene mutation carriers and non-mutation carrier siblings. Understanding this type of Alzheimer's disease is expected to provide important clues to the development of the more common sporadic form of Alzheimer´s disease. Our department is part of the DZNE and the Hertie Institute of Clinical Brain Research at the University of Tübingen.