Medical Research

What are your research interests?

• Understanding the causes of Alzheimer's disease
• Investigating the mechanism by which dietary folate deficiency leads to memory deficits
• Assessing the link between selected genetic and vascular risk factors, for instance elevated blood homocysteine and sugar levels, and the onset of Alzheimer's disease

Why did you get into research?

Alzheimer's disease is a devastating disorder and touches you very personally when a loved one is affected by the disease, as I have witnessed with my aunt. It changes your core personality. It was very difficult to explain to my mother that the changes in her sister's behaviour were caused by the disease and did not mean a change of feelings towards her or other members of her family.

For several years I have been working in collaboration with my wife, A/Professor Estelle Sontag, and many international researchers to elucidate the mechanisms leading to this disorder. We hope to find a new approach for treatment as unfortunately there is currently no effective drug or cure for Alzheimer's disease. 

What would be the ultimate goal for your research?

So far, more than 100 drug trials for Alzheimer's disease have failed. Our goal is to find a novel safe treatment that could delay the onset and prevent the progression of Alzheimer's disease and dementia. To that end, we are striving to solve the mechanisms that are triggering the disease process. 

Brief Profile

Dr Jean-Marie Sontag's first strong interest in neuroscience was ignited during his thesis when he started studying how neurons signal to each other through a process called exocytosis. After completion of his PhD at the Louis-Pasteur University in Strasbourg, France, he moved to the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, a top ranked medical school in the world.

There, Dr Sontag pursued an interest in the mechanism of synaptic transmission in the ground-breaking laboratory of Dr Thomas Sudhof, who received the Nobel Price in Medicine in 2013 for his work on the synapse. Having developed an interest for translational research, Dr Sontag also spent several years working in biotech companies in the US. However, he decided to continue work on Alzheimer's disease and returned to the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center where he worked with neuropathologists. Studies of human brain tissue unveiled new clues for the development of Alzheimer's disease pathology. 

Since mid-2009, Dr Sontag has been a member of the University of Newcastle where he has pursued research on Alzheimer's disease with his wife, Associate Professor Estelle Sontag. In recent years, they were able to elucidate new mechanisms by which known risk factors for Alzheimer's disease, such as dietary folate deficiency, vascular and genetic risk factors, can promote and accelerate the disease process. This work has gained considerable attention and informed the design of new trials in elderly patients with folate derivatives and other related compounds.    

Future Focus

Finding new mechanisms involved in the disease process will allow us to develop new drugs that could improve the life and slow down cognitive decline in patients affected by Alzheimer's disease.

Specialised/Technical Skills

• Preclinical cellular and laboratory models of Alzheimer's disease, hyperhomocysteinaemia and folate deficiency
• Signal transduction, neuritogenesis, synaptic proteins
• Confocal microscopy, protein biochemistry, molecular and cellular biology

Affiliations

• International Society of Neurochemistry (ISN)
• Australian Society of Neuroscience (ANS)
• The Priority Research Centre for Translational Neuroscience and Mental Health
• University of Newcastle Preclinical Neurobiology Research group