Johannes Attems’ research interest is neurodegenerative diseases of the ageing brain with a focus on clinico-neuropathological correlative studies. Despite the categorisation of age associated neurodegenerative diseases into specific subtypes, such as Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body diseases, it becomes more and more apparent that the ageing brain is characterised by the presence of multiple pathologies. Hence, JA aims to improve the neuropathological assessment of this cerebral multimorbidity (e.g. by employing fully automated quantitative assessment of neuropathological lesions) to evaluate the combined influence of various morbidities on the clinical picture as this might lead to the identification of new disease subtypes and thereby to the development of novel therapeutic strategies against age associated neurodegeneration.
JA is Professor of Neuropathology at Newcastle University, Honorary Consultant Pathologist at Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle and Director of the Newcastle Brain Tissue Resource and of the Alzheimer’s Research UK Network Centre Newcastle. He is Editor in Chief of Acta Neuropathologica and leads the Neurodegenerative Pathology Research Groups, since 2003 he published over 200 scientific articles, which were cited over 7500 times and his h-index is 52 (April 2019). See: http://research.ncl.ac.uk/ndprg/