Institut für Pharmakologie und Klinische Pharmazie

Privatdozentin Dr. Martina Zimmermann

Neurodegenerative Diseases: Neuropharmacology and Health Humanities

Neuropharmacological Approaches

  • Cholinergic mechanisms of neurodegeneration

Health Humanities Approaches

  • Dynamics between the medico-scientific discourse regarding neurodegenerative diseases and their socio-cultural perception and representation
  • The medico-historical grounding of the presentation of patient and illness
  • Medical Humanities in Pharmaceutical Sciences Teaching

For more information on my Health Humanities activities see: www.martinazimmermann.org. See also the commentary describing my interdisciplinary work and publications below.

Pharmaceutical Sciences Teaching

Integration of Health Humanities aspects in lectures, seminars and workshops for students of the Pharmaceutical Sciences, because they will have direct, day-to-day contact with patients and caregivers and, additionally, play a role in filtering and relaying information to health care staff and concerned individuals.

Research and Education

April 2013: Venia legendi in Pharmacology und Toxicology

Since April 2013: External Lecturer in the Department of Pharmacology, Goethe University Frankfurt, and Wellcome Trust Researcher at King's College London

Scientific Publications

Selected Recent Original Research Papers

  • Guangfeng Li, Jochen Klein, Martina Zimmermann*
    Pathophysiological concentrations of amyloid induce sustained upregulation of readthrough AChE-R mediating anti-apoptotic effects.
    Neuroscience 2013;240:349-60
  • Guangfeng Li, Anne Gleinich, Martina Zimmermann*
    Staurosporine-induced apoptosis presents with unexpected cholinergic effects in a differentiated neuroblastoma cell line.
    Neurochemistry International 2012;61:1011-1020.
  • Ricarda Härtl, Anne Gleinich, Martina Zimmermann*
    Dramatic increase in readthrough acetylcholinesterase in a cellular model of oxidative stress
    Journal of Neurochemistry 2011;116(6):1088-1096
  • Cherie Bond, Martina Zimmermann, Susan A Greenfield.
    Upregulation of alpha7 nicotinic receptors by acetylcholinesterse C-terminal peptides.
    PLoS ONE 2009;4(3):e4846

Selected Review Articles 

  • Martina Zimmermann
    Neuronal AChE splice variants and their non-hydrolytic functions: redefining a target of AChE inhibitors?
    British Journal of Pharmacology 2013;170(5):953-967
  • Martina Zimmermann
    Physiologie und Pathophysiologie der Schilddrüse.
    Pharmazie in Unserer Zeit 2012;5:390-394
  • Susan A Greenfield, Martina Zimmermann*, Cherie E Bond.
    Non-hydrolytic functions of AChE: The significance of C-terminal peptides.
    FEBS Journal 2008;275(4):604-611

Teaching Papers:

Interdisciplinary Publications (see also Teaching Papers):

I have explored the reflection of opposing societal views on dementia in recent fictional texts (Med Hum, 2010), and examined the metaphorical language employed in relation to cognitive conditions (Med Hum, 2012; Lit Med, 2017) and the mythical formulation of caregiver experience (J Med Humanit, 2013) in life-writing.
In the conviction that dementia life-writing is ideally positioned to instigate a counter-discourse in response to the conceptualisation of patients’ low performance (Neurol Sci, 2011), I have expanded my research to an in-depth analysis of the interplay between patient and caregiver discourse. This research is published with the Palgrave imprint in their Literature, Science and Medicine series as The Poetics and Politics of Alzheimer’s Disease Life-Writing. At the moment, I am working on my second monograph, about the dynamics between the illness understanding related to medico-scientific progress and the socio-cultural perception of dementia.