Alberto Catanese

After receiving his PhD, Dr. Catanese funded is junior research group within the Institute Anatomy and Cell Biology at the University of Ulm (Germany). He became Junior Faculty of the Ulm Medical School in 2021 and obtained the venia legendi for anatomy and cell biology in 2023. Thanks to his work in the ALS field, he was awarded different research prizes such as the Young Investigator Award 2023 of the European Network to Cure ALS (ENCALS), the Christa Lorenz-ALS Forschungspreis (2023) and the Felix-Jerusalem-Preis der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Muskelkranke e.V. (2024), as well as the Young Investigator Award of the German Anatomical Society (2021).

The main research goal of the Catanese lab is to investigate the pathomechanisms characterizing the motoneurons of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) patients using state-of-the-art setups for human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSC)-based models. We combine 2D neuronal cultures, cerebral and spinal organoids, multi-omics approaches and post mortem samples to uncover the pathologic alterations that drive neurodegeneration and depict a common “pathogenic signature” shared by different cases of ALS. In particular, we focus on synaptic aberrations and catabolic dysfunctions with the final goal of identifying novel therapeutic targets for the treatment of ALS.