Monday October 06, 2014
Jeremy Allen
MLive.com - Scientists and doctors at the
University of Michigan were given an $11.5 million grant to launch a five-year
study into better treating and understanding Parkinson's disease – with the
main goal of understanding how changes in the brain cells lead to dangerous
falls.
With
the grant – administered by the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and
Stroke, part of the National Institutes of Health – U-M will become one of only
nine homes of the Morris K. Udall Centers of Excellence in Parkinson's Disease
Research in the country.
The
National Parkinson's foundation estimates that upwards of 60,000 people are
diagnosed with the disease each year, adding to the nearly 1 million people who
currently have it.
The
U-M investigators will focus on the cholinergic system – a brain chemical
system that is rapidly emerging as a key player in the disease's effect on
walking and balance. Researchers say the cholinergic system helps focus one's
attention on tasks such as walking, and may be the next key target for
Parkinson's treatments.
"Understanding
the role of the cholinergic system is a key unexplored frontier in Parkinson's
disease, and will allow us to go beyond the limits of current practice, so we
can create better therapies to suppress the terrible symptoms of the disease
that affect balance, walking and overall independence," William Dauer, who
will be the center's director said in a news release.
Dauer
directs the UMHS Movement Disorders program and is the Elinor Levine Professor
of Neurology, and an associate professor of Cell and Molecular Biology, in the
U-M Medical School.
He
added that most Parkinson's disease research and treatment focuses on the
brain's dopamine system, which normally helps control movement. This control
breaks down in Parkinson's patients, as more and more dopamine-producing brain
cells called neurons are lost.
The
new center will conduct three interrelated projects to better understand the
role of the cholinergic system in falls, focusing on the effect of lost
cholinergic neurons in brain areas called the basal forebrain, which regulates
attention, and the pedunculopontine nucleus, which controls balance.
The
team will work to study the effects, in both rats and people, and to determine
if it may be possible to increase cholinergic traffic in the brains of patients
using an already-approved drug that targets acetylcholine receptors on the
surface of brain cells.
That
drug, varenicline or Chantix, is currently available by prescription to help
people stop smoking.
The
U-M Udall Center team includes researchers in the medical school who treat
Parkinson's patients at the U-M Health System and the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare
System, as well as a neuroscientist in the College of Literature, Science &
the Arts, and biostatisticians from the schools of Nursing and Public Health.
The
center will also partner with the Michigan Alzheimer's Disease Center in minority
outreach efforts, and run a Udall Center Fellows program, co-funded by U-M
Medical School and the Department of Neurology.
It
will allow physicians and physician-scientists interested in Parkinson's
disease to receive two years of intensive training and participate in center
research.
http://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/index.ssf/2014/10/u-m_gets_115m_grant_to_launch.html
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