Crosstalk: Inflammation in Parkinson's disease (PD) in a humanized in vitro model

Fred Gage
The Salk Institute for Biological Studies
Early Translational II: TR2-01778
Status: Active
$2336404.00

The Early Translational Awards, which are awarded annually, are intended to either lead to a drug candidate for an unmet medical need or address a bottleneck in the development of new therapies. The 20 Early Translational II awards worth $68,898,250 were awarded 10/21/10. You can learn more about the awards by reading the RFA or reading the press release, and the follow-up press release announcing additional decisions.

Public Abstract (provided by applicant)

Parkinson's Disease (PD) is the most common neurodegenerative movement disorder. It is characterized by motor impairment such as slowness of movements, shaking and gait disturbances. Age is the most consistent risk factor for PD, and as we have an aging population, it is of upmost importance that we find therapies to limit the social, economic and emotional burden of this disease. Most of the studies to find better drugs for PD have been done in rodents. However, many of these drugs failed when tested in PD patients. One problem is that we can only investigate the diseased neurons of the brain after the PD patients have died. We propose to use skin cells from PD patients and reprogram these into neurons and other surrounding cells in the brain called glia. This is a model to study the disease while the patient is still alive. We will investigate how the glial surrounding cells affect the survival of neurons. We will also test drugs that are protective for glial cells and neurons. Overall, this approach is advantageous because it allows for the study of pathological development of PD in a human system. The goal of this project is to identify key molecular events involved at early stages in PD and exploit these as potential points of therapeutic intervention.

Statement of benefit to California (provided by applicant)

The goal of this proposal is to create human cell-based models for neurodegenerative disease using transgenic human embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells reprogrammed from skin samples of highly clinically characterized Parkinson's Disease (PD) patients and age-matched controls. Given that age is the most consistent risk factor for PD, and we have an aging population, it is of utmost importance that we unravel the cellular, molecular, and genetic causes of the highly specific cell death characteristic of PD. New drugs can be developed out of these studies that will also benefit the citizens of the State of California. In addition, if our strategy can go into preclinical development, this approach would most likely be performed in a pharmaceutical company based in California.