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Prof. Neville Vassallo (Department of Physiology & Biochemistry) was an invited speaker at the .

His keynote presentation was entitled: “Amyloid Pores – A New Class of Mitochondrial Porins?”, wherein Prof. Vassallo presented his work over recent years on the discovery of channel-like pores in mitochondria formed by amyloid proteins implicated in Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and type-2 Diabetes Mellitus. Part of this work was already been published in a series of recent papers by Prof. Vassallo in , , , , and Nature Publishing Group’s .

Prof. Vassallo explained how the interaction between toxic protein aggregates and mitochondria appears to be critically dependent upon a particular type of mitochondrial lipid. The presence of pore-like structures allows unregulated flux of water and electrolytes across the mitochondrial membranes, leading to a gross derangement of mitochondrial function. Since mitochondria are critical for cellular energy production, a bioenergetic crisis ensues, resulting finally in death of the neuron. Prof. Vassallo concluded that the discovery of “mitochondrial porins” provides a novel target for development of new therapies with which to combat these devastating degenerative diseases.

The scientific programme also featured other talks by top international experts in the field of amyloid proteins and associated diseases, including Prof. Michele Vendruscolo and Prof. Tuomas Knowles (University of Cambridge, UK), Prof. Roland Riek (ETH Zurich, Switzerland), Prof. Jin Hyung Lee (Stanford University, USA), Prof. Christian Griesinger (Max Planck Institute of Biophysical Chemistry, Germany), Prof. Ehud Gazit (Tel Aviv University, Israel), and Prof. Rakez Kayed (University of Texas, USA), amongst others.

Not least, this symposium opened doors to potential collaborative projects with several international academics present who showed considerable interest in the research carried out at the University of Malta.

Currently ongoing research on amyloid proteins presented at this symposium is being supported as part of the DIAMYLOID project, a Research Excellence Programme (REP-2021-016) financed by the Malta Council for Science & Technology.