Grant: Project Grant

Parkinson's disease (PD) affects over 100,000 people in Canada and the numbers will only grow as the population ages. PD involves the death of dopamine neurons in the midbrain, which leads to devastating motor and functional impairment. Although treatment is available, its effectiveness diminishes over the long term. Hope for a more definitive treatment lies in basic biomedical research. A convergence of work over the past few years has led to the discovery that that alpha-synuclein, a key protein that misfold and aggregates in PD, can spread from one neuron to another and propagate in a prion-like fashion. The main hypothesis of this proposal is that the spread of alpha-synuclein contributes to PD and represents a promising new therapeutic target. Regardless of the ultimate mechanism of alpha-synuclein toxicity within neurons, limiting its spread would have a major therapeutic impact for patients suffering from PD because it would have the potential to slow or stop disease progression. The overall goals of this project are to characterize the mechanisms involved in the propagation of alpha-synuclein in PD and to explore strategies to limit its spread. As virtually nothing is currently known about how alpha-synuclein spreads or how to prevent it, the work will address a major unmet need in neurodegeneration research and will be ideally positioned to translate their findings into novel therapies benefiting patients with PD.