Dr. Annika Kluge is a resident at the department of neurology, University of Kiel, Germany. Starting her dissertation, she developed great interest in experimental research and acquired a wide range of biochemical methods. She received the Bruhn-Research Award of the University of Kiel and the Otto Hess Research Award of the German Centre of Cardiovascular Research for her work on cardiac hypertrophy. Since starting work in the department of neurology, Dr. Kluge has focused her research activities on movement disorders, in particular on Parkinson’s disease (PD). Under the leadership of Professor Daniela Berg, she became a member of the working group on “Early detection of PD” and established a collaboration with Professor Friederike Zunke. Her research interests include the identification and characterization of potential PD biomarkers. In her collaboration, she was able to define a method to isolate and amplify pathological alpha-synuclein from rectal biopsies and from extracellular vesicles.