MSU researchers have demonstrated the possibility of treating Parkinson's disease at its inception by treating the protein that triggers it before the disease can sicken the patient.
A team of researchers led by Basir Ahmad, a postdoctoral researcher at Michigan State University, has shown that slow-wriggling alpha-synuclein proteins are the cause of aggregation, or clumping together, which is the first step of Parkinson's.
The results are published in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
While scientists understand how proteins are structured, they do not yet know how they are built, a process known as folding. When errors happen infolding, proteins clump together, form plaques such as those found in Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's and Lou Gehrig's disease, and cause cells to degenerate.
Lisa Lapidus, MSU associate professor of physics and astronomy and co-author of the paper, has dedicated her lab to researching folding.
"There are many, many steps that take place in aggregation, but we've identified the first step," she said. "Finding a method to fight the disease at its first stage, rather than somewhere further down the road,can hopefully increase the success rate in which the disease is treated."
The identification of this critical first step already has the researchers pursuing new ways to attack the disease. Lapidus is currently testing a number of naturally occurring compounds, which could push the rearranging protein out of the danger zone.
"We are now looking for molecules that can alter the protein when it first begins to ‘misfold,' which could eventually lead to the development of a drug that could prevent aggregation before it happens," she said. Yujie Chen, MSU graduate student, was one of the co-authors of the paper.
Source:http://www.wlns.com/story/16536510/msu-researchers-identify-path-to-treat-parkinsons-disease-at-its-inception
A team of researchers led by Basir Ahmad, a postdoctoral researcher at Michigan State University, has shown that slow-wriggling alpha-synuclein proteins are the cause of aggregation, or clumping together, which is the first step of Parkinson's.
The results are published in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
While scientists understand how proteins are structured, they do not yet know how they are built, a process known as folding. When errors happen infolding, proteins clump together, form plaques such as those found in Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's and Lou Gehrig's disease, and cause cells to degenerate.
Lisa Lapidus, MSU associate professor of physics and astronomy and co-author of the paper, has dedicated her lab to researching folding.
"There are many, many steps that take place in aggregation, but we've identified the first step," she said. "Finding a method to fight the disease at its first stage, rather than somewhere further down the road,can hopefully increase the success rate in which the disease is treated."
The identification of this critical first step already has the researchers pursuing new ways to attack the disease. Lapidus is currently testing a number of naturally occurring compounds, which could push the rearranging protein out of the danger zone.
"We are now looking for molecules that can alter the protein when it first begins to ‘misfold,' which could eventually lead to the development of a drug that could prevent aggregation before it happens," she said. Yujie Chen, MSU graduate student, was one of the co-authors of the paper.
Source:http://www.wlns.com/story/16536510/msu-researchers-identify-path-to-treat-parkinsons-disease-at-its-inception
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