Mental Health for All: Global Action Plan on Dementia and Late-Life Depression

Zulfikar Abbany is a Senior Science Editor and multimedia journalist for Germany’s international broadcaster, DW (Deutsche Welle). He has produced and presented events for the European XFEL, DESY and World Health Summit in Germany, DATA.SPACE in Glasgow and spoken at the Battle of Ideas in London. Before that he was in news and current affairs with Australia Network television and Radio Australia for the Asia Pacific region. He has written for New Scientist, The Independent, The Observer, Sydney Morning Herald and The (Melbourne) Age newspapers.

Prof. Dr. Mazda Adli is Director of the Mood Disorders Research Group at the Charité – University Medicine Berlin, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, and Chair of the Fliedner Klinik Berlin, Centre for Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatic Medicine.
He has dedicated his research and personal engagement on strategies to overcome treatment-resistant depression and the treatment of bipolar disorder. Another area of interest is the investigation of modulators of individual stress vulnerability. In addition, he has initiated an interdisciplinary Research Group for Neurourbanism that examines the relation between cities and the mental health of their inhabitants. As executive Director, he was among the cofounders of the World Health Summit at Charité – University Medicine Berlin until 2012. Funded by the Berlin University Alliance and together with the Futurium Berlin and the interdisciplinary Research Group for Neurourbanism, he also developed the citizen science project “Your Emotional City”, which started in 2022 and researches the influence of urban planning and social factors on psychological well-being.

Anthony Hyman is Director/Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Dresden. Studying at the University College London, he wrote his PhD 1985-1987 about “The establishment of division axes in early C.elegans embryos” under the supervision of Dr. John White at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology, MRC in Cambridge, England. As a Postdoc in Prof. Tim Mitchison’s lab at the UCSF he investigated the mechanism of chromosome movement studied in vitro.

Today he is best known for his work on the role of phase separation in formation of biological compartments.

Frank Jessen received his MD degree from the University of Saarland in 1995. After residencies in neuropathology at the University of Düsseldorf, and neurology and psychiatry at the University of Bonn, he was board certified as a psychiatrist and psychotherapist in 2002. He served from 2002-2010 as a consultant psychiatrist and head of clinical Alzheimer’s disease research at the Department of Psychiatry, University of Bonn. In 2010, he was appointed Professor of Clinical Dementia Research and deputy director of the Department of Psychiatry, University of Bonn. In 2015, he was appointed as a Professor of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy and director of the Department of Psychiatry, University of Cologne.  Since 2010, he is an associate researcher at the German Center of Neurogenerative Diseases (DZNE).

Frank Jessen’s research focusses on prevention, early diagnosis and treatment development in Alzheimer’s disease with expertise in neuropsychology, neuroimaging, epidemiology and genetics. He coordinated national and international multicenter observational studies and clinical trials. He is author of over 550 publication and of over 20 books and book chapters on Alzheimer’s disease.

He is a member of the DZNE clinical board, chairman of the European Alzheimer’s Disease Consortium (EADC) and member the NIA-AA working group on Alzheimer’ s disease criteria. He is the past chairman of the ISTARRT professional interest area on subjective cognitive decline (SCD) and the SCD-initiative (SCD-I). He is the main author of the German national guideline on the diagnosis and treatment of dementia.

Dr. Maryna Polyakova studied medicine and specialised in psychiatry.  After her clinical work with dementia patients, she moved to research and worked in drug discovery for Alzheimer’s disease at the University of Vienna. Afterwards, she completed her PhD in cognitive neuroscience investigating biomarkers of late-life depression and mild cognitive impairment. She conducts research in the field of early diagnostics of dementia and aims to translate existing knowledge to prevent and improve dementia management.

I want to prevent dementia. I want this because currently, we start treating it too late when the brain has already degenerated. I can do this because I have over 10 years of experience in the field of dementia, understand the interventions which are required, and how to translate them into products that touch people’s lives.

Christiane started her career as neuroscientist in the field of prenatal neuronal growth. She joined the pharmaceutical and worked for leading companies, such as GSK and Novartis. From May 2020 until June 2022 Christiane headed the medical affairs team for Neurodegenerative Diseases at Biogen Germany. In July 2022 she took over the responsibility for Neuromuscular Diseases, pipeline products and digital health solutions as medical lead at Biogen Germany.