MEDICINE / PARKINSON’S DISEASE : Cloning of Protein Seen as Possible Breakthrough
UCLA scientists say they have taken a significant step toward understanding and treating Parkinson’s disease after cloning a protein vital to healthy brain cell operation.
“We are going to start making major progress” in the effort to understand and treat Parkinson’s, said Dr. Robert Edwards of the UCLA School of Medicine. “This could be a major key in the disease.”
A progressive neurological disorder that causes reduced mobility, tremors and muscular rigidity, Parkinson’s is associated with aging but can strike young adults. There is no cure.
If the cause can be identified, Edwards said Thursday, it is possible that “we could prevent it, and even reverse damage in people who have it.”
The research also clarified an aspect of how brain cells communicate, closing a gap in scientific knowledge, he said.
Edwards, assistant professor of neurology, was senior author of the study published today in the August issue of the journal Cell. The Institute of Life Science at Hebrew University in Israel also participated.
The cloned protein--chromaffin granule amine transporter, or CGAT--helps to rid nerve cells of toxic substances that may accumulate and lead to the type of brain cell death seen in Parkinson’s patients, the study found.
It could be that a lifetime of inadequate “detoxification” leads to the disease, Edwards said.
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The toxin responsible for Parkinson’s may be dopamine, a normal brain chemical that might go awry in the disease’s victims, this and other studies suggest.
The dopamine, a neurotransmitter that helps brain cells communicate, may be destroying the cells that produce it, Edwards said.
For decades, one treatment for the disease has been L-DOPA, a precursor to dopamine. Questions have been raised about whether the substance was both hurting and helping patients, said Dr. Dale Bredesen, assistant professor of neurology at UCLA.
The study also provided insight into the brain’s operation by pinpointing how neurotransmitters are pumped into vesicles, providing a missing link of information, Edwards said.
