New molecule to slow Parkinson’s
23 Mar 2015 by Evoluted New Media
Scientists have designed a peptide that can slow down brain cell damage associated with Parkinson disease.
A research team at the University of Bath used a peptide that can bind to the ?-synuclein protein - the misshapen form of which is associated with Parkinson’s disease. This peptide can stop the abnormal protein from clumping and killing brain cells.
Dr Jody Mason, from Department of Biology and Biochemistry at the University of Bath, said: “If you think of the misshapen ?-synuclein proteins as Lego bricks which stack to form a tower; our peptide acts like a smooth brick that sticks to the ?-synuclein and stops the tower from growing any bigger”.
In Parkinson’s, the aggregation of misshaped ?-synuclein is thought to contribute the development of the disease by transforming its abnormal forms into toxic fibrils. This is believed to damage brain cells and to result in neuronal dysfunction.
In the study, published in Journal of Biological Chemistry, the team screened a library of peptides against the mutated form of ?-synuclein and managed to isolate a 10-residue peptide. The peptide showed it can bind to ?-synuclein and effectively delay the formation of toxic fibrils and therefore slow the disease. This makes them potential candidates for modification into drugs.
“This research is in the early stages, but the results so far are very encouraging. We still need to overcome many obstacles before this can be developed into a drug treatment, but these findings could herald a new approach to treating Parkinson’s,” said Dr Mason.
Next, the scientists hope to test the peptide in mammalian neuron cells and then develop a drug that is effective in humans.
“It’s a difficult task to develop treatments that can stop the toxic build-up of proteins in the brains of people with Parkinson’s. We need more successes, like this one, if we are to develop drugs that could actually slow or stop the progression of Parkinson’s. At the moment no drugs are capable of doing this,” said Dr Arthur Roach, Director of Research and Development at Parkinson’s UK.
Paper: http://www.jbc.org/content/early/2015/01/23/jbc.M114.620484
