Research groups
Biography
I graduated with an MBBS-PhD degree from Imperial College School of Medicine in 2018 with Distinctions in Medical Sciences, Clinical Science and Clinical Practice. My PhD was jointly awarded from Imperial College London and the University of Hong Kong with a thesis titled "Clinicopathological investigations of the cholinergic basal forebrain in Lewy body disorders and ageing". Following graduation, I completed my foundation years training in the North West of England Foundation School in the Merseyside. Currently, I am an Internal Medicine Trainee at the Thames Valley Deanery and an NIHR Academic Clinical Fellow in Neurology at the University of Oxford.
I have served as a council member for the Clinical Neurosciences Section of the Royal Society of Medicine for 7 years (2011-2018) and I am currently a member of the British Neuropathological Society and a junior member of the Association of British Neurologists. I have been appointed as an Honorary Clinical Research Fellow at Imperial College London (2022 - present), Honorary Clinical Fellow at the University of Liverpool (2019 - present) and a Visiting Scholar at the University of Sydney (2018).
I was part of the founding committee (2012-13) and co-president (2013-14) of the Imperial College Neuroscience Society with the aim to make neuroscience more accessible to students. Subsequently, I co-founded the London Students' Neuroscience Network (LSNeuroN) with representatives from 4 other university neuroscience societies in London (QMBL, UCL, KCL and St. Georges).
Alan King Lun Liu
MBBS PhD MRCP(UK)
NIHR Academic Clinical Fellow in Neurology
Research interests
- Neuropathology of Parkinson's disease and Lewy body dementia
- Non-motor and non-dopaminergic aspects of Lewy body disorders
- The cholinergic system in neurodegenerative diseases
Technical expertise
- Dissection, histological processing and immunohistochemistry of human post-mortem brain tissues
- Neuropathological assessment of neurodegenerative disease
- Tissue clearing for three-dimensional visualisation of human and rodent brain tissues
- Confocal microscopy
Current research projects
Investigating the morphology, distribution and burden of astrocytic alpha-synuclein aggregation in Parkinson’s disease and incidental Lewy body disease.
Revisiting the pathological staging of Parkinson’s disease using novel antibodies targeting different epitope sites and post-translational modifications of alpha-synuclein.
Optimisation of spatial transcriptomics on post-mortem human brain tissues to explore the role of regional transcriptomic changes on selective vulnerability of neuron and glial cells in Lewy body disorders.
Key publications
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Journal article
Liu AKL. et al, (2015), Acta Neuropathologica, 129, 527 - 540
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Journal article
Lai HM. et al, (2018), Nature Communications, 9
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Journal article
Liu AKL. et al, (2018), Neuropathology and Applied Neurobiology, 44, 647 - 662
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Journal article
Liu AKL. et al, (2019), Acta Neuropathologica Communications, 7
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Journal article
Liu AKL. et al, (2016), Neuropathology and Applied Neurobiology, 42, 573 - 587
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Journal article
Liu AKL. et al, (2016), Acta Neuropathologica Communications, 4
Recent publications
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Preprint
Stedehouder J. et al, (2024)
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Preprint
Altay MF. et al, (2022)
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Journal article
Sinclair L. et al, (2021), J Neuropsychiatry Clin Neurosci
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Journal article
Napier-Hemy TP. et al, (2021), Urologia Journal, 039156032110166 - 039156032110166
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Conference paper
Hickson L. et al, (2021), AGE AND AGEING, 50