Researchers are one step closer to understanding how Parkinson’s disease develops and progresses thanks to biochemistry tools developed at Simon Fraser University.
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new research, published inside Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, and led by SFU researchers Matthew Deen and Yanping Zhu, outline new technology and methods for measuring the activity of lysosome glucocerebrosidase (GCase), an enzyme commonly associated with Parkinson’s disease.
Parkinson’s disease is the second most common neurodegenerative disease and can cause symptoms including tremors, muscle stiffness, impaired balance and coordination, which worsen over time. While the exact cause of Parkinson’s disease is still not fully understood, low GCaase activity is known to cause the disease, and a better understanding of this enzyme could help improve diagnosis and treatment.
The team’s findings suggest that the activity of this enzyme in patients is similar in both blood cells and brain cells, which could potentially allow researchers and medical professionals to monitor progression. of Parkinson’s disease in the brain using blood samples.
“This is the first method that has been shown to be an accurate and reliable report of activity,” said David Vocadlo, Professor of Chemistry and Molecular Biology and Biochemistry, one of the co-authors of the study. this enzyme directly in the lysosomes of living cells. “Being able to measure the lysosomal activity of this enzyme accurately could be very helpful in understanding the root cause of Parkinson’s disease as well as potentially helping diagnose or monitor its progression.”
In addition to improving the diagnosis and monitoring of Parkinson’s disease, the researchers hope that their work will advance new drug development. “Ultimately, these tools could be used in clinical trials to evaluate the effectiveness of strategies to increase GCaase activity in patients,” Vocadlo said, noting that his approach They were used in a report from Roche on testing a new strategy for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease.
SFU methods and tools could also help researchers better understand other neurodegenerative diseases associated with GCases such as Dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) and Gaucher Disease, a rare disease often manifest in childhood.
This work was funded by the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research and the Canadian Glycomics Network. The multinational Roche also collaborates on aspects of this work.
Written by Erin Brown-John
Source: SFU
