Patrik Verstreken

Patrik Verstreken obtained his degree in bio-engineering from the university of Brussels in 1998. He joined the Graduate school of Biomedical sciences at Baylor College of Medicine and under the mentorship of Hugo Bellen he obtained a PhD in Developmental Biology in 2003. After post-doctoral training and with support of a Marie Curie Excellence grant, he became a group leader at VIB and joined the faculty of the university of Leuven (KU Leuven) in 2007. In 2017, he became Science Director at the VIB-KU Leuven Center for Neuroscience. 
Patrik Verstreken has made important contributions to our understanding of synaptic function in health and neurodegenerative disease. Using fruit flies and more recently also human neurons derived from embryonic stem cells, Patrik’s work has focused on key proteins, lipids and mitochondria that regulate synaptic activity and how these molecules and organelles are misregulated in Parkinson’s disease. Patrik’s work has led to the discovery of specific presynaptic and organellar defects in Parkinson’s disease and in strategies as to how these defects can be suppressed.