Renzo Mancuso, PhD

I obtained my PhD in Neuroscience at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona in the laboratory of Prof. Xavier Navarro at the group of Neuroplasticity and Regeneration. I performed postdoctoral trainings in the laboratories of Prof. V. Hugh Perry at the University of Southampton (UK), and Prof. Bart De Strooper at the VIB-KU Leuven Center for Brain & Disease Research in Belgium. My scientific work is focused on the role of microglia in Alzheimer’s disease, liking human genetics with microglia function in iPSC-derived microglia and xenotransplantation models. My major findings are the elucidating the detrimental role of microglia in the aggregation of tau and tau-induced cell death, and the establishment of microglia humanized models for the study of genotype-phenotype interactions in neurodegenerative diseases. I have recently started my own laboratory at VIB-University of Antwerp where I aim to dissect the role of microglia and neuroinflammation in Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, using cellular systems to uncover major phenotypic modifications in microglia and building up from there into more complex in vivo chimeric models, and human primary samples.