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. Already, important advances have been made using molecular and genetic approaches. Over the past three decades, several genes have been identified which cause familial forms of PD or increase the risk of sporadic 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. Work over the past 15 years has led to the discovery that several of these genes converge on mitochondria, the cell's energy power plant, and a focal point of the degenerative process in PD. The aim of this application is to decipher how one of these PD genes, PINK1 impacts mitochondrial function normally and what goes wrong in disease.