He joined the graduate school of biomedical sciences at Baylor College of Medicine and under the mentorship of Hugo Bellen, he obtained a PhD in developmental biology in 2003.
In 2016 he became the director of the Vlaams Instituut voor Biotechnologie-KU Leuven Center for Brain & Disease Research.
Patrik Verstreken has made contributions to the understanding of synaptic function in health and neurodegenerative disease.
also human neurons derived from embryonic stem cells, the work in his lab has focused on key proteins, lipids and mitochondria that regulate synaptic activity and how these molecules and organelles are misregulated in Parkinson's disease.
[4][5][6][7] Verstreken's lab uses the fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) as a model system to study neuronal communication.