Elisangela Bressan

Elisangela Bressan is a scientific researcher in the Genome Biology of Neurodegenerative Diseases Department, German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE Tübingen), Germany. She received her undergraduate Pharmacy degree and Ph.D. in Pharmacology from the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC, Brazil).

During Dr. Bressan’s training she studied the peripheral and central mechanisms of chronic joint pain and inflammation in Carlos Rogerio Tonussi’s lab at the Department of Pharmacology, UFSC, Brazil. During her Ph.D. studies, she was one of the fourteen students selected by members of the IBRO Regional Committees for Africa (ARC) and Latin America (LARC), based on a competitive process from over 100 candidates, to attend the 02nd Canadian IBRO School of Neuroscience, Fundamentals of Pain (Montreal, Canada).

As postdoctoral fellow (2010 to 2014) in Yara Cury’s lab at Butantan Institute, Brazil and Peter Reeh’s lab at the Institute of Physiology and Pathophysiology, FAU Erlangen, Germany, she discovered a new cellular target for Crotalphine, a novel potent analgesic peptide from the venom of the South American rattlesnake Crotalus durissus terrificus. This study was awarded with a FAPESP-BAYLAT grant in 2013.

As scientific researcher (2014-2016) in Angelika Lampert’s lab at the Institute of Physiology, Uniklinik RWTH Aachen, she implemented the culture and differentiation of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) into sensory neurons, the requisite model to study the mechanisms of erythromelalgia (IEM), an inherited chronic pain syndrome attributed to mutations in the voltage-gated sodium channel (Nav) 1.7.

Since 2016, Dr. Bressan’s joined Peter Heutink’s Lab, DZNE Tübingen. Her current research interests lie in the field of neurodegenerative disease with focus on iPSC models and genomic approaches to study Parkinson’s Disease. As a member of FOUNDIN-PD (https://www.foundinpd.org/wp/), she coordinates the purification of dopaminergic (DA) neurons from a large set of iPSC lines (100-lines pilot test concluded in 2019). The ambition of this project is to map genetic alterations that lead to cellular and molecular changes associated with Parkinson's disease.

In 2019, Dr. Bressan received the DZNE 2018 Team-Award in recognition of her outstanding work at DZNE.