King's College London (KCL)
Partner description and expertise
King’s College London has an outstanding reputation for providing world-class teaching and cutting-edge research. King's is one of the top 20 universities in the world (2014/15 QS international world rankings) and is the fourth oldest university in England. The university is in the top seven UK universities for research earnings with an overall annual income of nearly £587 million. King’s has been involved in over 300 European Commission projects. The Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience is one of the 8 faculties of King’s College London and has an outstanding international reputation in the field of research, with the largest number of world leading or internationally excellent research activity units” for Psychiatry, Clinical Psychology and Neuroscience in the UK in the Research Assessment Exercise (2008).
Role in the BATCure project
King’s College London will lead the histological analysis of spinal cord, cardiac and peripheral nervous system pathology in CLN3, CLN6 and CLN7 deficient mice, using fixed tissues supplied by other participants (WP4). King’s will also advise on assessing the efficacy of gene therapy or small molecule therapies upon neuropathological landmarks in WP7 and WP8, respectively. He will also play key roles in sourcing some of the conditional CLN3 mouse models from collaborators (WP1), and in interacting with the patient organisations to disseminate information (WP9).
Prof. Jonathan David Cooper is Professor of Experimental Neuropathology and Head of Graduate Studies (Research) at King’s College London. Prof. Cooper leads the Pediatric Storage Disorders Laboratory (PSDL), which is the leading laboratory internationally for the morphological analysis of human, large and small animal models of Batten disease or the Neuronal ceroid Lipofuscinoses. PSDL has a wide network of collaborators across Europe, the US and Australasia and is often asked to characterise new disease models of assess the effects of novel therapeutic strategies. Prof. Cooper has taken part in both the previous EU Grants to focus on the NCLs (NCL Models and DEM-CHILD). Prof. Cooper’s team will shortly move into the Maurice Wohl Clinical Neuroscience Institute, which is set to be one of Europe’s largest centres for interdisciplinary neuroscience excellence. Located at the heart of King’s College London’s Denmark Hill Campus, it will be home to a unique core of neuroscience research. The new 6,500-square-metre Institute will bring together 250 clinicians and scientists from many disciplines to advance our understanding of disease mechanisms and develop new therapies for neurological and psychiatric disorders through innovative research.
