Dr Marcelo Barria
Senior Research Fellow / Group Leader
- Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences
- National CJD Research & Surveillance Unit
Contact details
- Tel: +44 (0)131 537 1980
- Email: Marcelo.Barria@ed.ac.uk
Address
- Street
-
National CJD Research & Surveillance Unit
Bryan Matthews Building
Western General Hospital - City
- Edinburgh
- Post code
- EH4 2XU
- Street
-
Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences
Chancellor’s Building
Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh - City
- Edinburgh
- Post code
- EH16 4SB
Background
Head of the Protein Biochemistry Laboratory and the CSF Diagnostic Laboratory at the National CJD Research & Surveillance Unit, Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences
Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the National CJD Research & Surveillance Unit, Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences, University of Edinburgh, UK
PhD in Molecular and Clinical Medicine at the College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine, School of Clinical Sciences, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
Research Associate at the George And Cynthia W Mitchell Center For Alzheimer's Disease And Other Brain Related Illnesses, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth), Houston, Texas, USA.
Graduate in Biology (specialisation in Virology) at the University Austral of Chile, Chile; Licentiate in Biological Sciences.
Responsibilities & affiliations
Dr Barria is the head of the Protein Biochemistry Laboratory and the CSF Diagnostics Laboratory at the National CJD Research & Surveillance Unit, Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences
Research summary
Currently, neurodegenerative diseases are attracting the interest of the scientific community due to the dramatic increase in the number of cases and their impact on public health. Many of these diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease and prion diseases, share common features and molecular patterns including protein misfolding, protein aggregation, and cell death. There is an unrevealed understanding on the specific mechanisms of how these aggregation process starts, and how they are implicated with complex pathways to trigger finally toxicity and neuronal loss. Prion research has been utilized to reveal details of protein misfolding disorders expanding the possibility to develop an early diagnostic method and future treatments for prions disease and to other protein misfolded disorders.