DCRT's postdoc Marlen Lauffer gave a course on neurodevelopment and neurodegeneration at a summer school in Vienna
Summer School ‚The beginning and end of a neuron’
From 25th July to 3rd August 2022, DCRT’s postdoc Marlen Lauffer, together with her friend and colleague Eliana Nachman (Postdoc, VIB Center for Brain & Disease Research - KU Leuven), was teaching a course on neurodevelopment and neurodegeneration at a summer school in Vienna.
The course, aimed at undergraduate students from the life sciences and medicine, covered a broad range of topics from neurodevelopment and neurodevelopmental disorders to neurodegeneration and neurodegenerative diseases. The students further learnt about modelling systems for neurological disorders and therapeutic options, the ones already on the market and new developments. Multiple interactive sessions gave the students the possibility to act as representatives of a pharma company, an ethic’s committee, a patient organization or a regulatory agency, and the option to design a pre-clinical and clinical testing pipeline for imaginary neurological diseases. One session was also dedicated to the DCRT and the possibilities and difficulties of n-of-1 treatments.
As part of the summer school, Marlen and Eliana got the chance to talk in front of all 140 participants giving a talk titled “A therapy for every(one) in a million?”. Here, they scripted a stage fight contrasting the need and costs for therapies targeted at a single person (one in a million) with costs and need for therapies targeting neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s (everyone in a million).
The summer school was a full success, and the students could not have formulated it better in their final session “Despite having lots of fun, we learnt a lot!”
posted on August 29, 2022
