Decoding Neural Systems
We build human gut–brain models on a chip to follow how α-synuclein travels from the intestine to neurons, and what enteric glia do along the way. The aim is to find early biomarkers and drug targets, years before motor symptoms appear.
Parkinson’s disease may start in the enteric nervous system long before the brain is affected. We combine organ-on-chip biology, glial cell biology and computational pharmacology to study that early window.
Enteric glial cells sense inflammation and misfolded proteins in the gut wall. We study how they respond to rotenone, LPS and α-synuclein, and whether they help spread or contain pathology.
We build human microfluidic models that connect the gut and the nervous system, so we can follow how α-synuclein and inflammatory signals move between them under controlled conditions.
We test whether approved drugs can calm glial inflammation, and use network pharmacology, molecular docking and explainable machine learning to pick targets and read biomarker patterns.
A small team of pharmacologists, pharmacists and biologists. Students and researchers from other fields are welcome.
Principal Investigator · Associate Professor of Medical Pharmacology
Dilara is a pharmacist and pharmacologist working on the gut–brain axis in Parkinson’s disease. Her PhD showed that vortioxetine protects against motor and cognitive deficits in a rotenone model of Parkinson’s disease, and her group now focuses on enteric glia and gut-first disease mechanisms. She developed microfluidic gut–brain models as a visiting researcher at the University of Oxford and learned Drosophila neuron culture in Prof. Andreas Prokop’s lab at the University of Manchester. She teaches pharmacology to medical, dental and nursing students, reviews for international journals and serves as a TÜBİTAK panelist.
Our work is supported by national and international funders and carried out with collaborators in Türkiye and abroad.
Modelling the gut–brain axis in early Parkinson’s disease: α-synuclein transport on a microfluidic chip and machine-learning analysis of glial responses.
Gut–brain axis-on-a-chip to identify glia-conditioned structural signatures of α-synuclein in early Parkinson’s disease. Proposed with the University of Twente.
Health Institutes of Türkiye. Oridonin, TLR4 signalling and autophagy in Parkinson’s disease from a gut–brain axis perspective.
Two projects on vortioxetine and TLR2/S100B signalling in the brain and enteric nervous system of rotenone-treated rats.
Institutional projects on enteric glia, neuroinflammation and Parkinson’s disease models.
Microfluidic Neurological Models Lab, Radcliffe Department of Medicine.
Guest editor of “Body–Brain Interactions in Parkinson’s Disease: Experimental Models and Emerging Technologies”.
BinYaprak interview and a video interview on Parkinson’s research (in Turkish, 2025).
Selected papers. The full list is on ORCID and Google Scholar.
We are looking for curious people who like both the bench and the keyboard. Training in cell culture, microfluidics and computational methods is part of the job.
Send a short CV and a paragraph on what you would like to work on.
Questions about our research, collaborations and open positions are welcome.
contact@nemutlulab.com