NEURO Epilepsy Lecture Series: Epigenomics and epilepsy - from disease mechanisms to new diagnostic approaches
The 2022-2023 Neuro Epilepsy Lecture Series will include eight lectures covering hot topics in basic and clinical epilepsy research. Speakers will include distinguished leaders and rising stars, with the goal of bridging basic research and clinical perspectives.
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Speaker: Katja Kobow, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Neuropathology, Universitätsklinikum Erlangen, Friedrich-Alexander-University (FAU) Erlangen, Germany
Abstract: Epigenetics is of outstanding importance for brain function. It is implicated in regulating neurogenesis, neuronal plasticity, long-term synaptic plasticity, and memory and may well contribute to the still not well understood pathomechanisms turning a structurally normal or abnormal brain into a condition able to elicit recurrent seizure activity. At the interface with genetics and environmental factors epigenetics is considered to contribute to the pathobiology of epilepsy and its co-morbidities. Beyond its gene regulatory function, epigenetics is also part of the molecular memory of any given cell. In this talk, I will discuss aberrant epigenetic changes as molecular pathomechanism in epilepsy and will show how we can use epigenetic signatures as diagnostic and predictive biomarker in epilepsy. Further, provided the growing awareness for aberrant epigenomics in epileptogenesis, there are also new perspectives for epigenetic medicine as novel therapeutic strategy in difficult-to-treat epilepsies, which will also be briefly discussed.
