This teaching unit belongs to the program of the Graduate School Neuro3P of the ITI NeuroStra. It is mandatory for NeuroDegen students, but is also available as optional unit to other NCI, NCO and JMN students.
The aim of this teaching is to present the pathology, genetics, biochemistry and cell biology of the major human neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, frontotemporal dementia, ALS, Huntington’s, and related diseases. A focus will be made on the different cellular and molecular pathophysiological mechanisms / pathways involved in neurodegenerative diseases that are common to most of them. It will start with a clinical overview of the different pathologies (by neurologists), followed by the general cellular/molecular aspects into play in these diseases. The combination of teaching from cliniciens and researchers should provide a unique perspective in relating clinical experiences with the molecular understanding needed to examine these diseases.
Objective 1 : Acquire a better knowledge on neurodegenerative diseases development and progression, associated clinical aspects, brain regions affected,… Here the focus will be the human diseases. Animal models will not be presented (see other M1S2 and M2S3 UEs).
Objective 2 : Give a description of general mechanisms that are commonly affected in neurodegenerative diseases such as protein aggregation / protein propagation / Prion-like, Vesicular transport / Cytoskeleton, Apotosis, Autophagy/ Exosomes, Neuroinflammation, metabolism…
Objective 3 : Give the general molecular bases allowing the understanding of specific aspects that will be developed in the S3 UE Advanced Neurodegen, particularly that covering the nucleus organization, gene transcription, chromatin organization and function, epigenetics and to describe technical tools that can be applied to the study of the brain / brain cells.

1/ Acquire knowledge of clinical aspects of the different neurodegenerative diseases studied in NeuroStra research laboratories.
2/ Understand and acquire the leading hypotheses regarding the biochemical and cellular dysfunctions that cause neurodegeneration (cellular and molcular aspects).
3/ Understand basic gene transcription and chromatin regulations and how to study chromatin organization in the brain