Professor Dick Swaab
Dick Swaab earned his medical and doctoral degrees at the University of Amsterdam, where he became involved in brain research during his third year of medical school. From1978 untill 2005 he has served as director of the Netherlands Institute for Brain Research, and since 1979 as Professor of Neurobiology at the medical faculty of his alma mater. He is leader of the research group on Neuropsychiatric Disorders. Swaab also holds guest professorships in China at the Anhui Medical University at Heifei, the Capital University of Medical Sciences in Beijing, and in Stanford, USA, and is “Companion in the Order of the Dutch Lion”, bestowed by her Royal Majesty Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands.
His major research interests focus on brain development, aging of the brain, Alzheimer’s disease, sexual differentiation, the neurobiological basis of depression and eating disorders. He has published over 380 papers in SCI journals, authored more than 180 chapters in books, and mentored 66 PhD students.
In 1985, Dr. Swaab founded the Netherlands Brain Bank to serve as a source of clinically and neuropathologically well-documented research tissue. Since its founding, the Brain Bank has provided samples from more than 3,000 autopsies to 400 research groups in 25 countries.
He is author of the monograph The Human Hypothalamus. Basic and Clinical Aspects. Part I: Nuclei of the Hypothalamus (Vol. 79, 2003), and part II: Neuropathology of the Hypothalamus and Adjacent Brain Structures (Vol. 80, 2004). Handbook of Clinical Neurology, Elsevier, Amsterdam (1000pp).
Neuropsychiatric Diseases
Head: D.F. Swaab
In order to provide a link between the animal experimental research and the investigation of human brain disorders, we founded the Netherlands Brain Bank (NBB) in 1985. The NBB provides many groups all over the world with well-documented postmortem human brain material for research purposes.
On the basis of this material two main research lines are carried out:
1. The human hypothalamus; a neurobiological basis for neuropsychiatric disorders
The research objective is to determine the hypothalamic basis of signs and symptoms of psychiatric, neurological, and neuroendocrine disorders in order to find new targets for rational therapeutic strategies. For this purpose we have built a unique collection of some 2000 serially sectioned human hypothalami that enable us to investigate structural and functional alterations that underlie the hypothalamic signs and symptoms of such disorders. For the upcoming period, the focus of this group will be on depression, multiple sclerosis, eating disorders including Prader-Willi syndrome, hypertension, schizophrenia, thyroid disorders. Sexual differentiation of the brain and the interaction of sex hormones and the adult brain is investigated in relation to the disorders mentioned and to transsexuality.
2. Reactivation of atrophic neurons in Alzheimer’s disease; postmortem studies
The research objective is to reactivate metabolically impaired neurons in Alzheimer patients by pharmacological or non-pharmacological therapeutic strategies in order to maintain or restore function. The research strategy is to detect putative factors and targets for such a therapy by investigating postmortem material (using neuronal activity markers, immunocytochemistry, in situ hybridization and microarrays) in order to establish the reason for the differences between (i) brain structures that are neuropathologically affected and metabolically impaired in Alzheimer’s disease and (ii) brain structures that remain intact or are even activated during this disease process. The putative stimulating factors revealed by our research (e.g. stem cells, neurotrophins, neurotrophin receptors, sex hormones, melatonin, anti-A) are subsequently tested for their effect in a unique system, i.e., postmortem tissue in which human neurons are kept alive for months.
