Helle Bogetofte Barnkob

The focus of my research is to understand the cellular mechanisms underlying Parkinson’s disease. To achieve this goal, I apply induced pluripotent stem-cell (iPSC)-neurons from Parkinson's patients as disease models. To fully characterise the neurodegenerative processes occurring in the patient iPSC-neurons, I use mass spectrometry-based analyses to identify changes to the proteome and post-translational modifications (PTMs) of proteins resulting from the disease.

I am an MD, PhD, from the University of Southern Denmark. During medical school I spend a pre-graduate research year in the group of Professor Ole Isacson, Harvard University, working on optimisation of dopaminergic differentiation of iPSCs.

As part of my PhD project I worked in the Wade-Martins group for 1.5 years studying the proteomic/PTMomic effects of GBA-N370S mutations in Parkinson's patient iPSC-neurons.

The aim of my current collaboration with the Wade-Martin's group is to study sporadic Parkinson's disease using the above outline methods, funded by a Lundbeck Foundation postdoctoral grant.