Podcast – ADPD 2025 Conference Highlights – Part 2

Voice Over:

The Dementia Researcher podcast, talking careers, research, conference highlights, and so much more.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

Welcome to the second part of a special episode of Dementia Researcher podcast, covering highlights from AD/PD 2025 held in the beautiful historic city of Vienna, Austria.

I'm Dr. Isabel Castanho. I'm an instructor at BIDMC and Harvard Medical School in Boston, United States of America. There I work in the lab of Dr. Winston Hide that specialises in computational and systems biology. I also host a podcast, She Has a PhD, which spotlights women leaders in science. I am thrilled to be back hosting the Dementia Researcher podcast for a second time. This time from AD/PD, bringing you highlights from the second half of one of the most important events in Alzheimer's and Parkinson's research. I'm joined by Dr. Emma Garland from the University of Sheffield in the UK; Susan Rohde from Amsterdam, UMC in Netherlands; and Dr. Martyna Matuszyk from the Alzheimer's Society in the UK. And I'm sure I messed that one up. Please correct me, Martyna.

Dr Martyna Matuszyk:

It's Martyna Matuszyk.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

Okay. Thank you. I mean, I'm Portuguese and my name gets pronounced badly all the time, but I really try my best. So my esteemed guests will be sharing their favourite presentations, posters, panels, conversations, you name it. They're highlights from the conference. Hi, everyone and welcome.

Dr Emma Garland:

Hello.

Susan Rohde:

Hey.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

Hey, why don't we start by having you introduce yourself properly? In addition to your name properly, please tell us a little bit about who you are, where you come from, and what do you do. Should we actually go around? Should we start with Emma?

Dr Emma Garland:

Yeah. So I'm Dr. Emma Garland, and I'm a postdoc at the University of Sheffield. I've been a postdoc there for about a year now, and I work with Dr. Suman De in his group in the Sheffield Institute for Translational Neuroscience. Before that, I did my PhD in the University of Southampton with Delphine Bosch. My work now mainly focuses on protein interactions in Alzheimer's disease using IPSC stem cell based models.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

Very interesting. Susan?

Susan Rohde:

So I am Susan Rohde. Thank you for pronouncing my name so well. I'm indeed from Amsterdam, from the Amsterdam UMC, and I work at the 100-Plus Study in which we study cognitively healthy centenarians, so people that are over a hundred years of age, which is led by Henne Holstege. And I'm focused on the brains that are donated by these people in which we investigate if there are pathologies, and how these pathologies may differ from what we see in people that are affected by cognitive decline or dementia. So that is in a nutshell, what I do on a daily basis.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

Thank you. Martyna?

Dr Martyna Matuszyk:

Hi, I'm Martyna Matuszyk. I am a research comms officer at Alzheimer's Society. Before that, I was a researcher at Sheffield. But Alzheimer's Society is one of the biggest funders of dementia in the UK. We work with over 400 researchers right now, and we fund everything into all types of dementia, Alzheimer's disease and some rare form of dementia as well from treatments to diagnosis, care, innovation. You name it, we do it.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

I can confirm because I was funded by the Alzheimer's Society during my PhD at University of Exeter. So actually before we dive into your conference highlights, I would like to highlight or to mention one of my highlights, which was Susan's presentation. So Susan gave a fantastic presentation on Friday, and you also received the Junior Faculty Award this year. Congratulations. Tell us more about that.

Susan Rohde:

Thanks. Well, that is a great honour. That was handed to us on the first day. We went on stage with all these nice, talented young researchers. That felt a bit unrealistic, but that is really a big honour. Shall I tell something about the presentation that I gave or...

Dr Isabel Castanho:

Yes. Then you're a PhD student. I'm not sure you finished-

Susan Rohde:

Oh yeah, maybe I forgot.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

... which is impressive.

Susan Rohde:

Yeah. So I'm a final phase PhD student, so I'm actually in my extra time to speak in football terms. So I'm in the final phase, yes. I went for an exchange project to New York City to Mount Sinai and there we did a lot of interesting things, and that is what I got to present here at AD/PD. So what we did is we looked into the hippocampi of these cognitively healthy centenarians, and we really quantitated the amount of amyloid beta and tau pathology, which I did in New York with Jamie Walker and Timothy Richardson, which was a great collaboration.

We could actually correlate the presence of these pathologies to the cognitive assessments that we also do for these centenarians. And that gave us really interesting results, if I can say that. And so we tried to bit distinguish when brains have amyloid beta and tau pathology, but it also occurs pretty often that brains have only tau pathology, which is a bit outside of that amyloid cascade hypothesis. But we see it in almost half of our centenarian brains, of which we have over a hundred now, which is the great effort of Henne Holstege.

So I talked about what these patterns that we see and that they have a different effect on cognition, but I was actually really nervous for that talk maybe because of the award. I had a bit of a... And there were also some speakers in that session that I personally really look up to when I started my studies as a bachelor and all these big names. And then suddenly you are amongst them kind of... Well, not kind of. So I was pretty nervous. I'm glad that you liked it and that it was a highlight for you.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

I can totally relate with what you said because last year I co-chaired that session. I don't want to brag, but I also got the award last year and I found myself on the first day, opening ceremony, first row, sitting next to your PI, to Dr. Holstege. Is that how you say it?

Susan Rohde:

Yeah.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

And I found the courage to say hello and introduce myself. I've been a big, really fan girl kind of thing. Been a huge fan of her work for years. I can totally relate to what you said, but you did great. It was fantastic work and really great presentation. Not least important was Emma's poster. Do you want to tell us a little bit about your presentation?

Dr Emma Garland:

Sure. I had a poster in the first or second and third day of the conference, and it was on some kind of quite preliminary data because IPSCs are hard to work with and take a lot of optimization. So we've only just got to the stage where we're starting to actually get some data from them now. I showed our characterization of our IPSC, derived cortical neurons. And what I'm looking at mainly is how the ratio shift of amyloid beta 40 and 42 changes throughout disease.

So in early disease or in healthy controls, we have about a nine to one ratio of amyloid beta 40 to 42. And amyloid beta 40 is thought to be the more less toxic version of the protein. And then as Alzheimer's disease progresses, this ratio shifts more towards amyloid beta 42, which is the more toxic form of the protein. So we are using our neurons and I'm adding different ratios of amyloid beta 40 and 42 and seeing how the neurons react and how they're vulnerable to these proteins.

So that was what my poster was presenting. So I only had an N of one at this stage, but we saw some interesting results. We used oligomers and fibrils because again, there's a lot of evidence for maybe the smaller oligomeric species of the protein being more toxic. So we definitely saw an increase in our neural vulnerability assays with the higher amounts of amyloid beta 42, but yeah.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

That's very interesting. I'm so sorry I missed your poster.

Dr Emma Garland:

No, that's okay.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

We actually have... So our group collaborates very closely with doctors Doo Yeon Kim and Rudy Tanzi from Mass General Hospital, and Priya Nanduri, who is also an instructor in our group, gave a presentation yesterday on exactly a recent paper they published in Europe. So I was not involved in that paper, but I keep hearing about the A-beta 40-40 iterations on a daily basis. So were you able to see Priya's presentation?

Dr Emma Garland:

What session was it?

Dr Isabel Castanho:

It was the last one yesterday. It was around 7:00 PM. Priya unfortunately couldn't join in the end, so he recorded the presentation. I'm pretty sure it's available online.

Dr Emma Garland:

They can watch that.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

Yeah, check it out. Very proud of Priya. He gave a fantastic presentation. It's great work. Okay. Let's jump into your highlights from part two of AD/PD 2025 here in Vienna, Austria.

If you're tuning in and haven't listened to part one yet, no worries. You can listen to the episodes in any order. In part one, the guests shared highlights from the first half of the week. Today, we're diving into the final few days. And it's been a long week. Of course, with hundreds of talks and posters, there's no way to cover it all. So instead, our guests will now highlight the presentations and moments that stood out the most to them. Let's start with Martyna. Why don't you kick things off? What were your highlights from the conference?

Dr Martyna Matuszyk:

Yeah. My highlight is definitely my favourite talk of the conference, and it's a non-science talk. It was by Trevor Salmon and it's about his personal story with dementia and his wife's dementia and it was a young onset dementia. And what I found the most interesting about it is that he talked about them, their journey to diagnosis, how they couldn't get an early accurate diagnosis very early on, but they knew something was wrong.

And then I found it really interesting that they went on a clinical trial and found the experience really positive. Even though the trial was a negative trial, the support that they received was amazing, and it was a really good contrast to all of the science and especially the industry talks that we've seen that is maybe a little bit data heavy, obviously, but Trevor's story and Trevor's presentation was a really nice perspective into why we do what we do.

I think it's really good to have people affected by dementia speak at conferences like this for the researchers and working researchers. And this is also a big thing for Alzheimer's society, that we want our researchers to have that perspective and work with our research network volunteers. So I think that was my favourite talk.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

Very, very interesting. I was not aware actually that AD/PD had that type of session.

Susan Rohde:

I also wrote it down as the top highlight.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

Oh, wow.

Susan Rohde:

It was really, caught me off guard a bit. It did really well. It was very personal, and I think we needed that. It was like... The room was silent. It was really impressive. It really made a deep impression on me as well. And it's, I think, a really nice motivation as well to see that what we do collectively, sometimes you walk into a session and you may feel a bit like, "Oh, this is so out of my topic. I know nothing."

But the whole idea of this conference is that you have all these experts on... We all work on Alzheimer's, but within that still specifically. So we are really a network and we do that for these kinds of people and for these stories to prevent that in the future. I think there needs to be... I would like to see more of that at AD/PD because it is demotivation to do your work, to do collaborations, to step out of your comfort zone. Thanks for picking that. I also really want to say thanks to Trevor for that impressive talk.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

Yeah. I couldn't agree more. And for me, it's interesting, the first time I was in your position, Susan, was... You said it perfectly, caught off guard, was actually in the UK when I was doing my PhD. The first time I went to the Alzheimer's Research UK conference, that was the first time I saw. So usually the conference starts with someone sharing their story. And I remember tears coming to my eyes. Also, I guess as a researcher, you get so focused on your own problems as well, experiments that don't work, trying to publish your papers that you, for moments, forget the people, and then you hear their stories.

And it's what you said, you get motivated to do what you do. And I think it also can change the way you see things, the way you see your science. I remember two years ago at AIC, I was in a panel with Adam Smith from Dementia Researcher. So they invited a few of us with different backgrounds to discuss the highlights similar to what we're doing today, but to discuss the highlights from AIC. I was the early researcher representative, I guess, and there was someone else.

There was actually one of the guests was someone with early onset Alzheimer's disease. I remember being so sceptic at the time with the new therapies, and he said something that I'll never forget. He changed my perspective as he said, "You know what? For people in my situation where there is no therapy available, you researchers may see that two months is not a lot. For me..." I feel emotional. And he said, "For me, two months is a lot. It's two more months where I can remember my family."

And that really touched me. I was like, "Wow. We're sometimes so focused on certain parts of the research of the science that we forget to actually ask the people that are affected about it."

Susan Rohde:

Yeah. Can I add something to that? In Melissa Murray's talk from the major clinic, she's a neuropathologist. She told a really nice story, I would say with... And I'm very sorry that I don't know her name now, but that she's really close contact with a patient representative. So maybe we can add that. I can come back to that later because I would like to properly say the name. But that was, I think something that more of us could do to include in your talk, the relevance of your work. And I think that Melissa Murray did really well in also incorporating that into her scientific story.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

Yeah. Would you say... Actually, I think. I saw this a lot in the UK, but I think the Alzheimer's Society and the ARUK actually put a lot of effort into involving patients and people affected by the diseases with the research. I don't know maybe... I guess I'm the only one coming from the US today here, but I actually don't see that as much perhaps in the US. Although, I feel like now the Alzheimer's Association, for example, is also putting a lot of effort into that.

So it's definitely something to discuss with funders to try and provide those connections, build the bridges between the researchers and the people affected by the diseases. Wow. Thank you. Thank you for highlighting that. I'll go actually now next to Emma. Is there anything that you would like to highlight?

Dr Emma Garland:

Yes. So one of my first highlights is from day four of the conference, and it was in the brain-gut interaction session, which is, I think, an area that's kind of under-researched, but maybe coming to the spotlight now. So it was really interesting to hear more about it. And there was a lot of focus on Parkinson's disease because there's maybe more research into that area with the gut-brain access.

So there was a talk by Dr. Kyusik Ahn from Seoul National College of Medicine in the Republic of Korea. I thought his talk was fantastic. It was really clear. He explained everything. If you're not in that field of research, he gave really nice diagrams. He was very clear with his talk. So he talked about the visceral sensory nerves in the transmission of these pathological proteins from the gut to the brain in the context of Parkinson's disease.

So I think one of the main things that he was showing was that the vagus nerve could be one of the main transmission sources for alpha-synuclein. So they showed that there was alpha-synuclein in the colon of Parkinson's patients, and then they also found this in the dorsal mandala, which is where the vagus nerve terminates. So that was a good link for showing that this was a transmission route. But they also used organoids, which has been a very hot topic, I think at this conference. I've seen so many posters with organoid research, which I think is amazing.

They are very hard to use, but a really good technique. So they used colon organoids and they showed a transmission from their colon organoid to the brain organoid showing pathological spread of alpha-synuclein, I think. Oh no, wait. I think it was actually amyloid and tau. Sorry, I got that wrong. But it was a really nice talk in that.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

I didn't see it. Do they co-culture, the two? How do they...

Dr Emma Garland:

I guess, the organoids, they have all the cell types from either the colon or the brain. So it has all the cell types in there. So I guess it is a co-culture of cells, yeah.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

So they're able to see how they communicate?

Dr Emma Garland:

Yes.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

That's very interesting.

Dr Emma Garland:

And it was almost like they had, I guess, a mock vagus nerve that was transmitting the proteins along. So it was a really interesting talk. But he just gave it very well. He was very confident, but also very good at explaining his research.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

It's also interesting. I find at least to see that topic growing. It's still, I feel under research, but you would barely hear about it a few years ago, and now you're seeing more people talking about it. I'm actually excited to see where that topic is going to take us.

Dr Emma Garland:

I think your gut microbiome has a lot to do with your immunity as well, and it's really important to have a healthy gut microbiome. So definitely something we should be researching more into for sure.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

Very interesting. Okay. I would like to go back to Susan, because earlier you just chimed in on someone else's highlights, which was one of your highlights. But is there something else that you would like to highlight?

Susan Rohde:

Yeah, definitely. So I was speaking earlier that I was in this session with people that I looked up to amongst, which was Bart De Strooper that I know from an internship that I did before my PhD in Leuven, and he couldn't attend in person, but he recorded a presentation in which he explained how they investigate how the microglia in mice responds to treatment of [inaudible 00:20:28] and that is something that I've heard in multiple sessions, which I liked. And then quite soon he highlighted one gene that they found, SPP1 which was amongst the top to be upregulated in microglia that were triggered with this anti-amyloid beta antibody.

He explained on that, and they also did staining and it looked really convincing in mice. And then I hopped over to the next session, which was the title microglia. And then there was Lynn Van Ost who was former student in Amsterdam and is now at Northwestern. And I think there was quite a buzz about the paper that she published. So she also presented on that. And I will not go into much detail about that because it was quite impressive, and I'm not sure if I can fully replicate that correctly.

But there was also the SPP1 gene, which Bart alluded to found in mice. She also find it in human. Sorry, I didn't mention that yet. So she studied actual patient material of AD patients treated with these anti-amyloid antibodies. And she also looked at the microglia response. And there was also this SPP1. So suddenly, I don't know, I felt like there were dots being connected, and I felt I really liked seeing that, that sometimes you could feel really isolated doing a very specific study, but then it is placed in a bigger picture.

I really liked seeing that at the same time people are pointing to the same direction and then such a gene seems so specific. They do all these difficult data analysis and then one pops up and then that overlaps. That's to me, very convincing.

Dr Emma Garland:

It's reassuring, isn't it?

Susan Rohde:

Yeah, it's very reassuring.

Dr Emma Garland:

Do you mind if I jump in?

Susan Rohde:

Yeah, go ahead.

Dr Emma Garland:

With Lynn's talk because that was one of my highlights as well. So I know Lynn because she has collaborated with my old PhD supervisor, Delphine Bosch and James Nickel. So I loved her talk. I thought it was fantastic. She had so much data, so much transcriptomics data as well, which is lots of numbers and graphs,.

Susan Rohde:

But still it was very clear and beautiful. You could follow the story. So that is a really big shout out to Lynn for doing that. Such a data heavy, comprehensive story.

Dr Emma Garland:

And she said actually she had to cut a load of data out, so she must have a tonne. But I think what's really interesting is you mentioned it was the immunised brains, but it was also from the very first immunisation, anti-amyloid immunisation trial, which sadly did fail in its phase two stage. But we can still learn a lot from even "failures" in the field. So I think it's really nice that they're still looking at those brains and learning more from them, because then that will make hopefully the therapies that are coming out better today.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

And I really enjoyed those presentations too. And something that really stuck with me was something that Bart said about... Or Dr. De Strooper that, I'm sure I'm saying wrong again. But he said something about the importance of understanding the mechanisms. I attended the session. I believe it was in the first day. There was a discussion mostly about why some of the drugs have been... Or the FDA approved drugs haven't been approved in Europe as well. That was super interesting session.

And at some point there was a discussion about why one of them was approved or had been accepted as a good one in Europe, but the other one hadn't, when if you look at the clinical data, they look very similar. And then when I went to those presentations, it was quite interesting to see. Basically, the effects might be similar, but the mechanisms can be very different. And I find it really interesting that a gene comes up, but I'm myself more interested in bringing different things together.

So I try to get away more from the one gene and try to understand how they come together as processes and how different cells communicate and so on. But anyway, so the mechanism part really stuck to me. It's like, "Yes," because now we can also understand why are these drugs working, how they are working, and why are the other ones not working? So I found that very interesting.

Susan Rohde:

And maybe why certain drugs work really well for certain patients and not for other subtypes of patients. And I think there was also a tension for patient heterogeneity.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

Absolutely.

Susan Rohde:

So I think that is where we need to go as well.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

Absolutely. Yes, yes, yes. Precision medicine really. Yes, absolutely. I mean, if you don't mind, I would like to highlight a few things as well.

Susan Rohde:

Absolutely.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

Because there were a few things that excited me too. But I think what excited me the most this year was actually presentations by PhD students. I mean Susan being one of them. But I was impressed with multiple presentations from students from the UK. I think most of them are actually from the UK, but also Netherlands, Germany, Sweden. So a few that I would like to just mention very briefly. I'll start with the presentations and give some room for you. I don't know if you saw the presentation from Julia Pegoraro at the University of Exeter. I'm biassed because she did spend some time with us last year, about six months with us at Harvard. But the work she presented was not what she did with us. She presented the work that is the main focus of her PhD with Professor Katie Lennon. And this is investigating molecular mechanisms by which systemic infections may impact Alzheimer's disease progression. I really enjoyed her presentation. I mean, not that I would expect anything else because Julia is fantastic and she's close to finishing her PhD and is looking for postdoc opportunities, so I thought...

Susan Rohde:

It's a plug.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

Yes, because Julia is really, really good. And I really enjoyed her work, which I knew a little bit about, but I hadn't really seen a proper presentation from her. And then something else that you might have seen as well where all the presentations on the Global Neurodegeneration Proteomics Consortium or GNPC. They are going to release... So this is a big... For those that haven't heard about it yet, this is a big effort joining a lot of people working in proteomics.

They will release their platform on July 1st. So the platform will be available for the community and they will also publish a few papers in the nature journals about it. It has multiple diseases, so it's multiple cohorts, multiple diseases from... It's all neurodegenerative diseases, but AD, PD, FTD, ALS. I think it's going to be such a powerful resource. And I could see the excitement at the conference about that. Did that stood out to any of you?

Dr Emma Garland:

I don't think I caught... But that's really nice that they're going to publish it for availability for everyone, because I think that's one of the main things that... I mean, we as scientists need to be better at is sharing our research and not being too secretive about it. So it's nice that they're giving a platform for everyone.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

Actually, let's stay with you, Martyna. Anything else that you would like to highlight from the conference?

Dr Martyna Matuszyk:

Yeah. There was a few things, and I like that the researchers on these sofas have picked up on certain maybe mechanisms and themes that I thought were quite recurring during the conference and during some of the talks. I'm sure that we've all attended different talks due to parallel sessions running. You can't be everywhere all at once. But it's things like the immunity and the omics technologies that are coming and the themes that are important to big pharma companies.

So one of my highlights was a panel discussion. I think it was on a Thursday, and it was chaired by Jeffrey Cummings and Howard Phillips. And they talked about the promising strategies in Alzheimer's disease. But what really stood out to me was the bridge between academia and big pharma and biotech companies, and what is really important in collaborating between the two. They said something that really struck me perfectly. It was the right models and the right mechanisms and the right targets, and that maybe academics need to be a little bit better at collaborating with big pharma and biotech, but vice versa, and more communication as needed.

And definitely things like organoids were brought up that that's where the field is moving. Obviously, we know that animal models are not the perfect models. And with the new technology, we could move to something different and the need for biomarkers. The biomarkers I think are the next thing that people are really starting to focus on more and more with more technology coming through, with more data coming through and with more diversity in the participants coming through.

We're starting to really learn a lot more about biomarkers. And that is something that the trials desperately need as well. This is what I've learned myself at this conference that it's the biomarkers that we really need to assess how well those treatments are really working in real life for participants and really looking for confidence in either progressing treatments through their phases in clinical trials or killing the drugs early to make sure that we have cheaper, effective trials that really benefit us in the future, and quick.

I thought that whole panel discussion was very informative. And there was more things about obviously combination therapies and things about brain health and policy changes. So that was really a big picture panel, which I found really interesting. I don't know if you caught that.

Susan Rohde:

I missed it. I mean, there's so many happening. Constant FOMO of missing science. I'm glad that everything is recorded. That gives a bit more relaxed feeling, but still.

Dr Martyna Matuszyk:

But I do think that AD/PD is really good for researchers to come. This is my first time at AD/PD, so I think there is something for everyone. And there is also something new that you can learn every single day.

Dr Emma Garland:

I've really liked the talks from some of the pharma companies actually, because I think as researchers, we often don't get to see the trial results or we don't get to see the more clinical side of things as much. So I've actually quite enjoyed some of the pharma talks. And maybe a little bit biassed towards their drug a little bit, but I think it's been really interesting to see the results for sure.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

Yeah, I think also actually I saw a few unexpected, I guess... I mean, I know some people that work at pharma companies that do that type of research, but it's also nice to see pharma companies doing more basic science research. So it's not always...

Dr Emma Garland:

It wasn't just the marketing people, or the sales people, it was actual scientists giving the talk.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

And sometimes not even only testing their drug is actually like looking at a target. So it's just basic-

Dr Emma Garland:

Mechanisms.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

Exactly, exactly. So that was very interesting. Emma, I want to ask you, did you get a chance to go to the posters?

Dr Emma Garland:

I did, yes. There were a lot of posters. I've got a couple of highlights. I spoke to Eliana Sherman. I mean, she's from the University of Virginia in the USA. Her poster caught my eye because she's actually working with the same cell line that I'm working with, but she has made, as we've mentioned a few times now, the organoids. She's a PhD student. I believe she said she was in her first year or maybe second year. And it looks beautiful work. The organoids they've made are neurons, ash sites and microglia, and they're looking at the similar thing to us with the APOE genotypes, which is the risk allele for Alzheimer's disease. And they're looking at amyloid beta. But her poster was very nicely set out and she was very clearly passionate about what she did. So it was really nice to speak to her about her poster.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

Okay, very interesting. Any other posters?

Dr Emma Garland:

Yes, I spoke to, who is it today? Vivi Pekala, sorry, from Eastern Finland. And again, she was using IPSC, so I was drawn to her poster. They were probably drawn to ones that we kind of know about maybe. But she was looking at frontal temporal dementia. So again, they were doing direct conversion from fibroblasts to neurons and they were also doing co-cultures with astrocytes and microglia, but they were looking at the C9orf72 mutation, which she said was very common in Finland. I think that's where it might've been discovered possibly or something like that.

But again, she was a first year PhD student and they'd just been characterising their co-cultures. But it was a really nice poster. And actually we have a mutual connection because I was telling her about my work and saying that we had a colleague who was doing some electrophysiology for us, and she asked where I was based, so I said, Sheffield. And then she said, "It's not Matthew Livesey, is it?" And I was like, "Oh, yeah, it is." And her boss knows him. They've done some collaborations, I think with the EFAs. So we had a mutual connection, which was nice to hear.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

It's quite interesting that often you meet someone and then you see how your network actually works. Right?

Dr Emma Garland:

Yeah. I had someone come to my poster actually, and he saw my boss's name and he said, "Oh, I've been emailing him because I think he gave my boss a compound for something we were using." So another connection from just seeing it like a name on a poster, which was really cool.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

It was a different interaction, but one of my highlights, if I can, I also mentioned at the posters was by... And earlier I said I was very impressed with PhD students, so this one is Samuel or Sam Bolger from Imperial College London. He works with Professor Paul Matthews at Imperial and he presented his work describing neuronal vulnerability in Alzheimer's disease using imaging mass cytometry with a particular focus on Reelin-positive neurons in the adrenal cortex.

So for those that know me, I currently have a pre-printout on BioArchive reporting signatures of neuronal resilience to Alzheimer's disease, including in Reelin-positive neurons. And it was funny because I went to his poster and he mentioned the paper and like, "Oh, you're Isabel? You're the first author."

Dr Emma Garland:

Very flattering, yeah.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

I was very impressed with his work and I can see he's someone we should keep an eye on. He's a promising second year PhD student and it led to very interesting scientific discussions around his work and around the work or the topic in general. So I was very impressed with his work and someone else. I was even more impressed in terms of this is a first year PhD student that just started in October. And I know. I was very impressed with her poster, so she's connecting for those. I know EQTLs, she's doing similar thing but with methylation.

So she's connecting gene expression with methylation, which changes in DNA methylation in human brain. And again, I don't feel as bad because my choices are very biassed. In my PhD, I worked in DNA methylation at the University of Exeter, so that's my obvious interest. But I was very impressed with what she presented because, again, first year PhD student. And we ended up having a really interesting discussion around her results and where she could take it next and it was very, very impressive.

I should say her name actually. Again, totally wrong. Marit Junge from Lübeck University Germany and she works with Professor Lars Bertram. So very, very impressed with PhD students this year. Susan, anyone in the posters? Did you get a chance to go there?

Susan Rohde:

I'm going to make a confession here. I couldn't survive the poster sessions because it was very crowded and there was not a lot of oxygen, so-

Dr Emma Garland:

It got hot.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

Yeah.

Susan Rohde:

I'm going to make use again of the online platform to look at some posters digitally. So I didn't get to the posters as much as I wanted to this year. So no, yeah.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

It's heavy. And also to make you feel less bad, I also end up... I think about 50% of the posters I was interested in were not there. And I noticed, I think most people were from the US and they just didn't travel. I'm also looking forward to keeping up. And it is just a lot. My brain today is just... Martyna, did you get a chance to go to posters?

Dr Martyna Matuszyk:

Yeah.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

Oh, you did? Okay, good.

Dr Martyna Matuszyk:

I visited lots. I was very excited. I love poster presentations. And for those people who can't find the online platform because maybe they didn't register, there are a lot of posters on X as well on social media. So if you search for the AD/PD 2025 hashtag, a lot of people post them. And that's how I found some of the interesting posters as well that I maybe have missed whilst walking around.

I found a poster that maybe of interest to Emma, but I'm not sure. I want to ask you a follow-up question. So in my PhD I worked with A-beta 42. We were made oligomers and fibrils from recombinant. There was a poster by Karolina Matulewska from Lund University, and they were comparing recombinant and synthetic forms of A-beta 42, and there was very chemistry heavy. So there was a lot about seeding the A-beta, a lot about kinetics, but they made a connection about the self seeding and how potent and the recombinant and a synthetic A-beta peptides are and how that might make your research a little bit different to other research out there, depending on which A-beta peptide you use, because they might have different toxicity, they might aggregate a slightly different. And they had a little sticker at the bottom where you could... Like a poll almost where they were checking which peptide researchers are using for their work. So I want to ask you which peptide do you use? Do you use synthetic? Do you use recombinant? Do you use something else?

Dr Emma Garland:

We use recombinant. At the moment we are buying it in from a company, but actually our PhD student has just started the process of making it with E. coli and plasmid expression, so protein purification. So hopefully we might start getting our own, but I guess it's still recombinant protein. So that's what we use, but we try and make sure that when we've done our repeats that we will use the same batch of protein, the same lot number, so then we know it is reproducible because we did have a batch issue with one of the older batches. So there can be some issues with buying the protein in. But, yeah.

Susan Rohde:

I like it when people get creative with their posts and presentations in these days filled with information. It's very nice when somebody provides some fresh idea or that triggers you and to be a bit... Yeah.

Dr Emma Garland:

I actually stole an idea from my friend because she had this amazing idea of obviously posters are limited space for what you can put on them. So she did a little QR code with some extra data. So I stole that idea from her. So I showed my [inaudible 00:42:21] data on my poster, and then I have my fibril data on a presentation which people could scan if they wanted to see it.

Susan Rohde:

Can you see how many people scanned it?

Dr Emma Garland:

Oh no, actually.

Susan Rohde:

That's a shame.

Dr Emma Garland:

Oh, that would've been nice.

Susan Rohde:

You could see the board of peak hours.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

It's also a way... We were earlier sharing how it was just so many different things that anything that can make your poster stand out. Right?

Dr Emma Garland:

Yes.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

I'm a huge fan of better posters. I don't know if you've heard. But they have, I think it's still called that, but I think it was last year at AIC I received a lot of compliments, but a lot of people use it. It's just a format where you highlight your main finding or a controversial something, a big sentence. In the middle of the poster you can also put an image. And last year I asked AI to generate an image of a brain with a lot of flowers coming out because I work in cognitive resilience and I sort of see it like that. And I had people come in because they were like, "What is this? This looks like a piece of art or something."

So anything that can... But I love the idea of a poll or something like that in the QR code as well. I did that in the past, adding my picture in case people miss me.

Susan Rohde:

Always, always.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

Oh, did you miss me? I'm around. Because you sometimes need to eat.

Dr Emma Garland:

And they're both in the lunch sessions, aren't they?

Dr Isabel Castanho:

Yes, exactly. Or you're at the sessions.

Susan Rohde:

Can I add one thing?

Dr Isabel Castanho:

Yes, of course.

Susan Rohde:

I saw a poster that was like a cartoon.

Dr Martyna Matuszyk:

Was it the cheese one?

Susan Rohde:

Yes. [inaudible 00:43:59]

Dr Emma Garland:

It's on social media. It's on social media.

Dr Martyna Matuszyk:

It was like a cartoon thing, wasn't it?

Dr Emma Garland:

It was amazing. It catches your eye immediately.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

There we go. This is even more creative. I must say that I've left X. I was a huge fan of Twitter, but if I can use this platform to try and bring people to Bluesky.

Dr Emma Garland:

I am just about to make a Bluesky.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

So yes, everyone just come to Bluesky.

Dr Emma Garland:

I left X as well recently for obvious reasons.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

For me it was very hard because I've been spending the last 10 years building my research community there. But Bluesky works. A lot of us-

Susan Rohde:

Bluesky works as well.

Dr Martyna Matuszyk:

If everyone is on Bluesky, please do follow Alzheimer's Society. We are also on Bluesky.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

I think I follow you already, but I will make sure I do. This will be unfortunately our last round, but I would like to go with something a little bit different just because I find that it's not less important than the presentations. On my list of highlights are the conversations and discussions outside the sessions or the posters. So like the corridor conversations or lunch conversations, dinner conversation. And this can happen anywhere. I even had a really interesting discussion on my way back from the city centre to the hotel, which is so nice.

I personally thrive at conferences and I think it's especially because of this. I love to see the science, but we can all read papers. But it's completely different when you are with the authors of those papers and you can ask questions and have discussions. I think there's something about being eye-to-eye, right? Human connection. And it's so funny because I think day two or three, I had a video call with my husband also to see my six-month-old baby.

And at some point he started teasing me. He was like... This is the first time also I've been away from being a mom. I was on leave in the last six months, and my husband started teasing me saying that I looked happier than when we go on vacation. Which is not true. I like my vacation breaks.

Dr Emma Garland:

You're in your natural habitat.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

Exactly. But I really thrive and I feel like I go back to my science feeling more creative and motivated because of these discussions. What about you? I see Susan.

Susan Rohde:

It's kind of what I alluded to earlier that you see connecting the dots and you feel connected instead of maybe in isolation with your own group. You're not alone of course, but you work on something very specific. And then if you talk to people, then you see shared interest, values, topics. I have the same. On the one hand, it's socially tiring, and on the other hand, it gives you energy. It's very... I can't find a word now, but-

Dr Martyna Matuszyk:

Polarising.

Susan Rohde:

Yeah. Thank you. It has two sides, but I totally agree.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

Were you able to chat with your heroes, I guess, from your session? And did you get a chance to introduce yourself?

Susan Rohde:

Yeah. And we met because-

Dr Isabel Castanho:

Yes, that's true.

Susan Rohde:

... we were emailing and now we met in person.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

Yes. We can give a little teaser. Susan, I submitted a session to AIC in July with Tain Lucas from Columbia University, and one of our invited presenters was Susan. And then I realised she was going to be here, so we're meeting for the first time. But very interesting. Martyna, any conversations that you-

Dr Martyna Matuszyk:

Yes, for me coming as not a researcher anymore, it's quite different. So I'm meeting people just to meet them. So if I see a poster or a session that I am interested in or it will be a person that we fund or part fund, I make a point of actually saying hello and introducing myself because it's nice to see the name and the face to the research that we might not see in the lab because we are not in a lab, we're in office.

So I've said hello to Professor Nick Fox who was doing an MRI, an ultra-fast MRI research that we part fund. I've said hello to Martha Fiorani from UKDRI at UCL who we also fund or part fund for looking at new mouse models. I've met Emma for the first time from my old department when I used to work at Sheffield. So it's been really good to just meet people and meet researchers. And actually the conversations that we've had, I've asked what is the vibe of the research? What are you the most interested in so that I can bring it back to our team and just see what the trends are, see what excites the researchers, see what you guys are working on so that we can understand it a little bit better, being a little bit away from the lab maybe.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

Did you get a chance to meet Julia Pegoraro from the University of Exeter that I mentioned before, Martyna?

Dr Martyna Matuszyk:

No.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

She's funded by the Alzheimer's Society.

Dr Martyna Matuszyk:

Yeah, there's quite a few people that I might have missed, but I am only by myself here. So there's only so much I can cover.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

That's fair. That's very fair on top of the session. What about you, Emma? Any interesting, exciting conversations you have?

Dr Emma Garland:

Yeah. I mean, so I've come with my lab mate and she is fantastic. We've actually had some really nice conversations, even though we work on the same thing. We talk all the time at work, but actually coming here, it's made us think about other things. So we've actually had some really nice conversations about some of the talks that we've seen. But you're saying about meeting some of your heroes. I feel like sometimes I'm a little bit scared to go up to them. So I did want to go up because I saw a session. I think it was Dr. Michael Henneker. And I remember citing him in my thesis so many times, but I was too scared to go off and talk to him. So maybe I should be a bit braver and go speak to people.

Susan Rohde:

It can only be an honour to them. Somebody coming up, "I admire your work."

Dr Emma Garland:

That is true. That's very true.

Susan Rohde:

It's the best opening sentence you should have.

Dr Emma Garland:

True. And I guess maybe now, even though I didn't say hi to the conference, if I wanted to email them, at least I have a connection saying, "Oh, we were at both at AD/PD. Sorry, I didn't catch you."

Dr Isabel Castanho:

Yes. Absolutely.

Dr Emma Garland:

So I guess that could always work.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

I feel like that's how your PI reacted when I went full fan girl. And I could see her, "Oh, thank you. That's so nice of you."

Dr Emma Garland:

Of course, yeah.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

It's humans we're talking about, right?

Dr Emma Garland:

Yeah.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

And now also starting to be weirdly on the other side. I've had PhD students say things like, "Oh, I'm very aware of who you are," and I get like, "Oh, okay."

Susan Rohde:

Wow. Don't ber nervous.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

We're all human, so-

Dr Emma Garland:

Yeah, that's true.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

... you should do that.

Susan Rohde:

And they probably also have somebody that they look up to.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

Exactly.

Susan Rohde:

So it's an never ending thing. So you may-

Dr Isabel Castanho:

Absolutely.

Susan Rohde:

... soon start to just...

Dr Isabel Castanho:

Yeah, absolutely. Martyna?

Dr Martyna Matuszyk:

If I can ease your mind a little bit. It's not that bad. They might be busy people, but they are generally very nice.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

Yeah. Oh, I'm sure.

Dr Martyna Matuszyk:

I was quite nervous coming up to actually Trevor who gave the personal story talk, but as soon as I said hello, I introduced myself, he gave me the biggest hug. And it was just nice. It's nice.

Susan Rohde:

I'm sure.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

I had similar interactions because I've been working with professors, Rudy Tanzi, Liwei Tai from Boston for four years now. And weirdly, we had never met in person. And we are all in Boston, but they're busy. So we've been meeting for years on Zoom. It was so nice. I went to introduce myself and both of them gave me hugs. Also, the same with Professor Lars Bertram. And that was so nice because there was a connection already. And at the end of the day, they're all humans, and I went to them. You're the professors. But they're very nice. I feel neuroscientists in general, we're nice people.

Dr Emma Garland:

Yeah, it's a good breed.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

It's a good breed. Okay, so this was very nice, but sadly, that's all we have time for today. That said, if you want to learn more about this year's AD/PD there are lots of posts on social media like Martyna mentioned. Look for the hashtag AD/PD 2025 on Bluesky, X, LinkedIn. I know at least on those it's there. You can also visit the conference's website at adpd.kenes.com. I would like to thank to today's guests, Susan, Emma, Martyna, thank you so much for joining me in this really, really interesting conversation.

Dr Emma Garland:

Thank you for hosting as well. It's been great.

Dr Isabel Castanho:

You're very welcome. I would like to also thank obviously the Dementia Researcher podcast for having me and especially Adam Smith for the invitation, and the AD/PD committee for making these two episodes possible. Again, I'm Isabel Castanho and you've been listening to the Dementia Researcher podcast. Goodbye and see you soon. Bye.

Dr Emma Garland:

Bye.

Susan Rohde:

Thank you. Bye.

Dr Martyna Matuszyk:

Bye.

Voice Over:

The Dementia Researcher podcast, talking careers, research, conference highlights and so much more.