Michael J. Fox Foundation Funds $1.1 Million for Cutting-edge Approaches to Parkinson's Disease

• Asa Abeliovich, MD, PhD, of Columbia University is working to determine whether a gene silencing technique using microRNAs — short, noncoding molecules of RNA — can be effective in reducing alpha-synuclein, a protein whose aggregation, or clumping, in the brain is a hallmark of Parkinson's pathology.

• Jian Feng, PhD, of SUNY-Buffalo, and Patrick Alfryn Lewis, PhD, of the Institute of Neurology (London, UK) and John A. Hardy, PhD, University College London (London, UK) are conducting two separate investigations using newly discovered induced pluripotent stem cell (iPS) technology to shed greater light on the Parkinson's-implicated genes parkin and LRRK2. Using iPS, the teams are engineering stem cells from skin cells, then using these engineered stem cells to generate human dopamine neurons with or without mutations in the respective genes. Both projects seek to characterize disease mechanisms set off by genetic mutations and to create new models for testing therapeutic approaches that could prevent these events from occurring.

• Rahul Srinivasan, MBBS, PhD, and Henry A. Lester, PhD, of the California Institute of Technology are working to better understand epidemiological findings that have consistently shown smoking may protect against PD. The researchers hope to elucidate the mechanisms by which nicotine may protect dopamine neurons through development and validation of a screening test for small molecules that could increase nicotine receptor expression in the brain.

• Marcus Unger, MD, and Wolfgang Oertel, MD, of Phillips University (Marburg, Germany) want to find better treatments for the digestive problems that dramatically affect Parkinson's patients' quality of life, as well as test the Braak hypothesis, which posits that Parkinson's disease progresses through the body and to the brain in a series of stages starting in the gastrointestinal system. They are examining a possible link between constipation and Lewy body pathology in the gastric lining of people with PD.

A complete list of 2008 Rapid Response Innovation Awards to date, including researcher bios and grant abstracts, is available at www.michaeljfox.org.

Founded in 2000, The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research is dedicated to ensuring the development of a cure for Parkinson's disease within the coming decade through an aggressively funded research agenda. The Foundation has funded $126 million in research to date.