Grant: Foundation 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. Already, important advances have been made using molecular and genetic approaches. Not very long ago, genetics was not thought to be important in PD. However, in the past decades, several genes have been identified which cause familial forms of PD. My laboratory has a longstanding interest in understanding the normal function of these PD genes and how defects in the genes lead to PD. Advances in stem cell biology now make it possible to generate neurons from a small sample of skin or blood from patients. We will harness this new technology to better understand how disease develops using dopamine neurons-derived from PD patients, the cell type most relevant for the disease. This approach will not only help us better understand how PD develops but also to identify new therapeutic targets to treat the disease.