An Online Collaborative Research Platform
WikiMaladie is a project dedicated to building large-scale collaboration on finding the cause of Alzheimer's disease. Our strategy is to approach the problem with the scientific rigor that is standard in physics and chemistry. We will start with a clear, unbiased description of the hypotheses and the supporting evidence. If successful, this site will also become a living review (a review that evolves with time, as used in the astrophysics community, see Living Reviews in Relativity) and eventually an always-up-to-date textbook. The main inspiration for this online collaboration is a combination of the great success of Wikipedia and the online mathematics collaboration led by Tim Gowers known as Polymath.
For the moment, we are just two, Rob Scott and Giuseppe Grasso. Below find a brief bio of each of us.
Giuseppe Grasso, of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Catania, is focused on the study of molecular interactions between biomolecules involved in certain neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease. In particular, some metalloproteases involved with these diseases are studied and the possibility of modulating the enzymatic activity of these biomolecules for therapeutic purposes is investigated. The influence that metal ions such as copper or zinc and oxidative stress have on the biomolecular mechanisms involved in neurodegeneration is also studied using various analytical techniques such as mass spectrometry, surface plasmon resonance, NMR as well as biochemical methods. I am particularly interested in understanding the chemical processes at the base of protein misfolding.
Rob Scott, of the physics department and mathematics laboratory at the University of Western Brittany, is working on various research projects in physics: ocean physics, Einstein's theory of gravity, and protein physics of amyloid beta peptide. Obviously the latter is the most relevant to Alzheimer's research, but the scientific rigor that one learns in doing physics in other areas is important and missing in some research in the biomedical sciences. For more about me, see my GitHub pages.