The Michael J. Fox Foundation grant worth $221,000 was awarded to Prof Mike Dragunow, Dr Victor Dieriks, Dr Helen Murray and Prof Maurice Curtis.
Parkinson’s disease is a progressive movement disorder without a cure. Currently available treatments are designed to manage the motor symptoms of the disease, but by the time these symptoms manifest, the damage to the brain is too extensive to repair. Treating the underlying mechanisms of degeneration earlier in the disease may be the key to delaying or preventing the disease progression. The awarded grant, ‘A novel therapeutic target for Parkinson’s disease – does alpha-synuclein induce inflammation in human brain pericytes?’, will investigate new approaches to reduce neuroinflammation, which is a key process occurring early in the disease. Using newly identified pharmacological agents and human brain pericytes from the Hugh Green Biobank we hope to identify a new avenue to reduce the burden of Parkinson’s disease.
Image: From left Mike Dragunow and Victor Dieriks