1. Home
  2. News & Events
  3. News
  4. Lena Burbulla receives funding of more than 0.5 million euros from the Boehringer Ingelheim Foundation
News | 03/04/2023 | Award

Lena Burbulla receives funding of more than 0.5 million euros from the Boehringer Ingelheim Foundation

SyNergy member Lena Burbulla is selected for the Rise Up! Programme of the Boehringer Ingelheim Foundation. The program supports outstanding and unusually creative fundamental research in biology, chemistry, and medicine and is aimed at researchers who have accepted their first appointment as an associate professor at a German university. Lena will receive funding of more than 0.5 million euros to advance her research program investigating underlying molecular mechanisms of Parkinson’s disease.
 Portrait Lena Burbulla
Lena Burbulla

Her Rise up! project will specifically address the question of whether and how species-specific differences in genetic and epigenetic determinants drive the selective vulnerability of dopaminergic neurons in the human – but not mouse – midbrain, the cell type that preferentially degenerates in the brains of Parkinson’s disease patients. This program aims to help facilitate the development of novel disease-modifying strategies for Parkinson’s disease patients and may improve animal models of Parkinson’s disease by more accurately recapitulating human pathology in mouse neurons.