Anders Björklund
| Anders Björklund | |
|---|---|
| Born | 11 July 1945 Söderhamn, Sweden |
| 💼 Occupation | Professor of Neuroscience |
| 🏢 Organization | Lund University, Sweden |
| Known for | Pioneer in the study of cell- and gene-based reparative and neuroprotective mechanisms in the brain. |
Anders Björklund (born 11 July 1945) is a Swedish neuroscientist and pioneer in the study of cell- and gene-based reparative and neuroprotective mechanisms in the brain. He has spent his academic career at Lund University in Sweden, as Professor since 1983 and as Senior Professor at the Wallenberg Neuroscience Center since his formal retirement in 2012. Web site: www.wnc.lu.se.
Björklund’s main research interests are in studies of brain regeneration and repair, with focus on cell replacement and gene therapy in neurodegenerative diseases. In the 1980s his team at Lund University pioneered the development of stem cell-based therapies for brain repair, and his group has for more than four decades played a leading role in the development and use of dopamine cell replacement in patients with Parkinson’s disease. Current research at the Wallenberg Neuroscience Center is focused on the use of pluripotent stem cells for disease modeling, neuroprotection and brain repair. Björklund served as President of the European Neuroscience Association 1996-1998, and as Chairman of the Neuroscience panel at the European Research Council in Brussels in 2007-2010. He was elected member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1969.[1], and Foreign Member of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, in 2011[2][3].
Biography
Björklund was born in 1945 and grew up in Växjö in southern Sweden where he completed his gymnasium years. He started his medical studies at Lund University in 1964. In 1967 he was enrolled as a MD/PhD student in the lab of his mentor, Bengt Falck, the co-inventor of the histofluorescence method for visualization of dopamine, noradrenaline and serotonin in microscopic sections. This technique, the Falck-Hillarp method developed in the early 1960s, revolutionized the study of monoamine systems in the brain and gave Björklund the opportunity to develop his own line of research at the Histology department. After completion of his thesis in 1969 Björklund, together with his PhD student Olle Lindvall, carried out a series of studies on the organization of the monoaminergic systems in the brain, the dopaminergic projection systems, in particular. In the mid-1970s, and in close collaboration with his former PhD student Ulf Stenevi, he pioneered the development of techniques for the study of survival, integration and functional connectivity of fetal neuroblasts grafted to the brain and spinal cord. Together with Stephen Dunnett and Rusty Gage, who had joined his lab as postdocs in the early 1980s, and two highly gifted PhD students Patrik Brundin and Ole Isacson, Björklund’s group was first to report functional cell replacement in rodent models of Parkinson’s and Huntington’s disease[4][5], and in animal models of hippocampal damage and cognitive decline[6][7], using transplants of fetal neural tissue.
In 1986 the Lund team obtained permission to use tissue derived from aborted human fetuses in a series of open-label clinical trials in patients with Parkinson’s disease. These trials, led by his former student Olle Lindvall, provided proof-of-principle that immature dopamine neurons can survive and mature in the striatum in advanced Parkinson patients, and restore dopamine neurotransmission in the area of the striatum re-innervated by the grafted neurons[8][9]. Although the clinical outcome has been highly variable, the results in some of the grafted patients have been sufficiently impressive to encourage further development of this approach[10]. The Lund team has over more than four decades been in the forefront of the development of a cell-based therapy for patients with Parkinson’s disease. Current efforts, led by Björklund’s long-time collaborators Malin Parmar and Agnete Kirkeby and carried out in collaboration with the neurologist Roger Barker in Cambridge UK, are focused on the development of transplantable dopamine neurons, derived from human ES cells, for clinical application[11]
A second major research line in Björklund’s lab is focused on the use of neurotrophic factors, NGF and GDNF in particular, for neuroprotection and repair. His lab has been involved in the exploration of recombinant AAV vectors for neurotrophic factor and enzyme delivery to the brain, as well as the use of rAAV vectors for overexpression of human alpha-synuclein for modeling Parkinson-like neuropathology in rodents and monkeys[12][13]
Björklund has served as editor for 21 volumes of the Handbook of Chemical Neuroanatomy published between 1983 and 2005 (together with Tomas Hökfelt), and 4 volumes of Functional Neural Transplantation published between 1994 and 2017 (together with Stephen Dunnett).
References
- ↑ "Membership". Kungl. Vetenskpsakademien.
- ↑ "Membership". National Academy of Sciences.
- ↑ "A. Björklund NAS member profile". Proc Natl Acad Sci. 109: 13137-13139. 2012. PMID 3421159.
- ↑ "Reconstruction of the nigrostriatal dopamine pathway by intracerebral nigral transplants". Brain Research. 177: 555-560. 1979. PMID 574053.
- ↑ "Functional neuronal replacement by grafted striatal neurones in the ibotenic acid-lesioned rat striatum". Nature. 211: 458-460. 1984. PMID 6482962.
- ↑ "Septal transplants restore maze learning in rats with fornix-fimbria lesions". Brain Research. 251: 335-348. PMID 7139330.
- ↑ "Intrahippocampal septal grafts ameliorate learning impairments in aged rats". Science. 225: 533-536. PMID 6539949.
- ↑ "Grafts of fetal dopamine neurons survive and improve motor function in Parkinson's disease". Science. 247: 574-577. 1990. PMID 2105529.
- ↑ "Dopamine release from nigral transplants visualized in vivo in a Parkinson's patient". Nature Neuroscience. 2: 1137-1140. 1999. PMID 10570493.
- ↑ "Replacing Dopamine Neurons in Parkinson's Disease: How did it happen?". J Parkinsons Disease. 7: S23-S33. 2017. PMID 28282811.
- ↑ "Neuronal Replacement as a Tool for Basal Ganglia Circuitry Repair: 40 Years in Perspective". Front Cell Neuroscience. 14: 1-21. PMID 32547369 Check
|pmid=value (help). - ↑ "Parkinson-like neurodegeneration induced by targeted overexpression of alpha-synuclein in the nigrostriatal system". J Neuroscience. 22. 2002. PMID 11923443.
- ↑ "Animal models for preclinical Parkinson's research: An update and critical appraisal". Program Brain Research. 252: 27-59. 2020. PMID 32247366 Check
|pmid=value (help).
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