ALS has limited treatments, partially due to the lack of biomarkers that would help design better clinical trials, and the lack of models for the most common sporadic form of the disease. During my postdoctoral training I studied functional bioenergetic readouts and metabolism in ALS patient derived fibroblasts searching for disease relevant biomarkers. Currently I continue to work on developing biomarkers using primary fibroblasts originating from multiple forms of familial ALS, sporadic ALS and primary lateral sclerosis patients. Specifically, I focus on bioenergetic, and metabolic measures and cellular morphometry coupled with statistical machine learning techniques to develop biomarkers for ALS. My current work involves direct conversion of fibroblasts to cell types of the CNS relevant to ALS, such as induced motor neurons and induced astrocytes.
Selected publications:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37473581/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35652455/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32745521/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29065921/
Complete list of accepted publications:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/myncbi/csaba.konrad.1/bibliography/public/
Active Funding:
2019 – 2022 Muscular Dystrophy Association Development Grant ($210,000/ 3 years)
Title: Morphometric analysis of fibroblasts for biomarker discovery in sporadic ALS
This proposal aims to develop imaging based biomarkers for ALS
Proposal Number (pC ID): 602762
Award Number: 602762