Grant: Project Grant

Huntington's disease is an inherited neurodegenerative disorder that is fatal and has no cure. The prevalence of this disease in Canada is estimated at 1 in 7000, thus the need to understand the biological basis of the disease for the development of therapeutic treatments is of paramount importance. Huntington's disease is primarily characterized by progressive motor incoordination and involuntary movements that result from neurodegeneration of a region of the brain called the striatum. While recent discoveries suggest that there are significant neuroanatomical abnormalities early in development, the inhibitory synaptic abnormalities have not been studied in either the developing of mature brain. The overall objective of the proposed work is to understand the biological basis of the motor impairments in the striatum and broader basal ganglia, in particular those related to inhibitory synaptic transmission. Our goal is to identify cellular targets that can be exploited therapeutically to (i) slow disease onset, and (ii) reduced motor dysfunction that will both improve patient quality of life and reduce caregiver burden.