Maria Grazia Spillantini

Templated seeding induces the formation of Alzheimer paired helical tau filaments in human brain organoids

Cortical organoids from healthy human iPSCs, seeded with Alzheimer brain tau, form three-repeat tau filaments that cryo-EM shows are identical to Alzheimer paired helical filaments and need endogenous tau.

Early synaptic pathology is associated with small tau aggregates in Alzheimer's disease

The paper examines tau aggregates in Alzheimer's disease synaptosomes, finding that small tau aggregates are associated with early synaptic pathology.

GhostBuster: A Deep-Learning-based, Literature-Unbiased Gene Prioritization Tool for Gene Annotation Prediction

GhostBuster predicts gene functions and annotations while minimizing literature bias, outperforming biased datasets in identifying novel gene annotations.

Proteomizer: Leveraging the Transcriptome-Proteome Mismatch to Infer Novel Gene Regulatory Relations

Proteomizer infers proteomic profiles from transcriptomic and miRNomic data, improving differential expression analysis accuracy but with limited generalizability.

Myeloid-Driven Inflammation in Prodromal Parkinson's Disease

The paper identifies increased myeloid-driven inflammation in the CNS of prodromal Parkinson's Disease patients, linking gut and CNS immune responses through shared T cell clones.

Alpha-synuclein aggregation and dopaminergic neuron death in a new mouse model of Parkinson disease expressing human full-length and C-terminally truncated 1-120 alpha-synuclein.

This study shows that co-expressing human full-length and C-terminally truncated alpha-synuclein in mice increases alpha-synuclein aggregation and dopaminergic neuron loss, supporting the MI2BACo mouse model as a tool for Parkinson's disease research.

SynPull: a novel method for studying neurodegeneration-related aggregates in synaptosomes using super-resolution microscopy

SynPull combines single-molecule pulldown, super-resolution microscopy, and computational analysis to study protein aggregates in synaptosomes from human and mouse samples, revealing AT8-positive tau as the predominant aggregate in Alzheimer's disease.

New SNCA mutation and structures of α-synuclein filaments from juvenile-onset synucleinopathy

The paper identifies a SNCA mutation causing juvenile-onset synucleinopathy and describes the structural features of α-synuclein filaments associated with the disease.

Age-dependent formation of TMEM106B amyloid filaments in human brain

This study identifies age-dependent formation of TMEM106B amyloid filaments in human brains using cryo-EM, showing they appear in older individuals but not younger ones.

CSPα reduces aggregates and rescues striatal dopamine release in αsynuclein transgenic mice

This study shows that CSP reduces synuclein aggregates and restores dopamine release in a Parkinson's disease mouse model.

Microglia become hypofunctional and release metalloproteases and tau seeds after phagocytosing live neurons with P301S tau aggregates

The paper shows that microglia phagocytosing neurons with tau aggregates become hypofunctional and release tau seeds, contributing to tauopathy progression.

Tracking tau fibrillogenesis and consequent primary phagocytosis of neurons mediated by microglia in a living tauopathy model

This study tracks tau fibrillogenesis and microglial phagocytosis of neurons in a living tauopathy model, showing that microglia engulf tangle-bearing neurons and that TSPO ligands can reduce this process.

Depopulation of α-synuclein aggregates is associated with rescue of dopamine neuron dysfunction and death in a new Parkinson disease model

This study develops a new Parkinson's disease mouse model showing that reducing α-synuclein aggregates rescues dopamine neuron dysfunction and death.

Neuropathological validation of the MDS-PSP criteria with PSP and other frontotemporal lobar degeneration

This paper validates the 2017 MDS-PSP criteria for diagnosing PSP and variant syndromes using neuropathological data, showing higher sensitivity but lower specificity compared to older criteria.