L. P. (Leon) Munting, PhD

I am a translational neuroscientist with a research interest in dementia. I first came to the LUMC in 2014 as a master student from Utrecht, for an internship in the Human Genetics department on cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA), a neurovascular disease that leads to dementia and hemorrhage. My histological study turned out to be a stepping stone for a career in dementia research. Continuing in the LUMC, I did my PhD under supervision of dr. van der Weerd in the C. J. Gorter Center for MRI. I used MRI to study how vascular function is affected by amyloid in CAA mouse models. After that, I expanded my skillset with 2-photon microscopy, to perform mechanistic studies on CAA, in the van Veluw lab at Massachusetts General Hospital / Harvard Medical School. 3.5 years later, I returned to the LUMC to bridge my research to the clinic, and learned how to acquire human MRI data. Currently, I am working on a personal Alzheimer Nederland fellowship, on a 3-year project on brain clearance in CAA.

My research focus is on metabolic waste clearance in the brain, which is intricately linked to protein accumulations typically seen in dementia patients. As the brain does not have a traditional lymphatic system, there are still many fundamental unknowns regarding the basic physiological mechanisms of brain clearance. I find it fascinating that something so seemingly basic is still undiscovered and could have such potential implications if understood. This fascination fuels my current research project, which is an investigation on the role of neurovascular coupling in brain clearance.