President and CEO, Nolato
Interview with Professor Anders Björklund
Bagadilico's Anders Björklund talks about his long career in Parkinson's disease research. He has worked at Lund University since the mid-1960s and is most well-known for his groundbreaking experiments which led to nerve cell transplants on Parkinson's patients in 1987. The tests showed for the first time that transplanted brain cells from embryos can survive and function in the brain.
About Anders Björklund
In a 2012 interview, Professor Anders Björklund, then of Lund University, discussed his career in Parkinson's disease research, which he began in the mid-1960s. He said he was "very interested in how to repair the brain how to make a damaged brain or a dysfunctional part of the brain recover its function." Björklund described his most important achievement as "to move cell transplantation into the focus of research," noting that when the work started in the 1970s it was "looked upon as a rather meaningless idea which would be hopeless from the beginning." He recounted that his groundbreaking experiments led to nerve cell transplants on Parkinson's patients in 1987, which showed for the first time that transplanted brain cells from embryos can survive and function in the brain.
Transcript (20 segments)
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Anders Björklund0:03
I'm Anders Björklund, professor of Neuroscience here at Lund University in Sweden.
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Interviewer0:15
Why did you become a scientist?
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Anders Björklund0:20
Well, difficult to explain, but I think I'm basically a very curious person. When I started my medical studies, I had this idea that I probably wanted to go into some kind of research rather than become a doctor. So when I got the opportunity in the second year of medical school to start working in my future mentor's lab, then I took the opportunity and then I never finished my medical clinical training.
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Interviewer0:58
What's you describe as being your research focus?
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Anders Björklund1:03
Well, early I came to work with dopamine, but my thesis was around dopamine in the endocrine system, the hypothalamus, pituitary. In my early postdoc years, I switched to studying dopamine in the brain with microscopic techniques. The key was that my supervisor had developed a new technique called the Falck-Hillarp technique, which allowed very sensitive visualization of dopamine and dopamine neurons in the brain, and that's how it took off.
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Interviewer1:51
If I had to ask you the tough question, how would you describe your research in 30 seconds?
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Anders Björklund2:01
I'm very interested in how to repair the brain, how to make a damaged brain or a dysfunctional part of the brain recover its function. That's better than 30 seconds, quite a way.
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Interviewer2:17
Why is your research important?
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Anders Björklund2:21
Oh, I hope it is, but I think it's important only in the wider context. That's how research works. Research is a collective enterprise, and what one best can hope for is to contribute to that enterprise. I think Parkinson's research today is in a very dynamic and interesting phase of development, and it's really great to be part of that.
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Interviewer2:54
In your lifetime, what will Parkinson's research accomplish?
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Anders Björklund3:00
Well, in my lifetime, it depends. An optimist would say that sure, I'll live to see cell transplantation become a reality and stem cell-derived therapies become developed to the point when it can be properly tested in patients.
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Interviewer3:27
Okay, the toughest question of all: what is a cure for Parkinson's?
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Anders Björklund3:35
I think everybody knows that it's a matter of getting at the disease process and intervening reasonably early to stop it. That's my research on the pathophysiology, the pathogenic mechanisms of Parkinson's, is very important and also very interesting. I think we're starting to get insights into what happens in nerve cells and in dopamine neurons in particular in patients with Parkinson's, and that's a very important paradigm shift from, let's say, 10, 20 years ago.
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Interviewer4:27
If you were a PhD student starting out your research again, sort of wind the clock back, what would you do differently?
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Anders Björklund4:41
I'm not sure I would do anything differently, actually. You can't really reverse the progress of knowledge. You can't imagine yourself 20 years ago with the knowledge we have today, so that would be false pretense. I think I would advise young students to enter into this field of disease-related research. It's something that's become much more rewarding and productive in the recent period with the new technology, methodology, and insights that have been derived, and the interaction between basic research and clinical reality is now becoming much more productive to work with as a scientist.
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Interviewer5:40
If you had a message for patients, people with Parkinson's, what would it be?
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Anders Björklund5:50
Well, to take an active interest in research and keep a close eye. I think that around the corner there are new therapies, new treatments that may not represent a cure straight away, but we'll be seeing more and more effective treatments and treatments that will have broader impact on the various symptoms of the disease. I think also the insights into the subtypes of Parkinson's will be important. In the future, we will not be looking at Parkinson's disease as just one thing; it will be a family of related causes and also phenotypes, as it's called.
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Interviewer6:48
From your own research, if you once eventually you decide to retire, which I hope will be many years from now, what are you going to look back on as thinking that was the best thing I ever did research-wise?
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Anders Björklund7:05
Well, it's difficult to get away from the fact that the most important achievement I've been involved in is to move cell transplantation into the focus of research. When we started this in the '70s, it was looked upon as a rather meaningless idea which would be hopeless from the beginning. This gave us a situation where we for a few years were more or less alone in doing this kind of research, but then it's been picking up. The whole view of the brain as a dynamic, malleable, ever-changing structure has gradually evolved, and that means also that we today know that the brain can accept new cell elements into its circuitry, and new cell elements can also become functional. That's now quite well accepted.
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Interviewer8:22
And this, Anders Björklund, thank you very much. Thank you.