Researchers at the MassGeneral Institute for Neurodegenerative Disease (MGH-MIND) have identified a potential new drug target for the treatment of Parkinson's disease and possibly for other degenerative neurological disorders.
In an upcoming issue of the journal Science, the investigators describe finding, in cellular and animal models, that blocking the action of an enzyme called SIRT2 can protect the neurons damaged in Parkinson's disease from the toxic effects of alpha-synuclein, a protein that accumulates in the brains of Parkinson's patients. The study, which also suggests that inhibiting this pathway could help in the treatment of other conditions in which abnormal proteins accumulate in the brain, is receiving early online release on the Science Express website at http://www.sciencexpress.org.
"We have discovered a compelling new therapeutic approach for Parkinson's disease, which we expect will allow our scientists , as well as those at pharmaceutical and biotech companies , to pursue innovative new drugs that will treat and perhaps even cure this disorder," says Aleksey Kazantsev, PhD, director of MGH-MIND Drug Discovery Laboratory, who led the Science study. "Since the same sort of aggregation of misfolded proteins has been reported in Huntington's and Alzheimer's diseases - as well as Lewy body dementia, which also involves alpha-synuclein deposits - we plan to test this approach in those conditions as well."
Parkinson's disease , characterized by tremors, rigidity, difficulty walking and other symptoms , is caused by the destruction of brain cells that produce the neurotransmitter dopamine. In recent years researchers at several centers have been studying the role of alpha-synuclein accumulations in dopamine-producing neurons, observed in patients with both inherited and sporadic Parkinson's disease. MGH-MIND investigators have discovered that, in Parkinson's, the alpha-synuclein molecule folds abnormally and form aggregates called inclusion bodies. Such inclusions of other abnormal proteins are seen in several disorders, but whether inclusions are toxic or protective to neurons has been controversial.
In a paper published last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a research team led by Kazantsev analyzed ways to reduce the size of inclusions containing misfolded versions of alpha-synuclein or of the Huntington's disease-associated protein huntingtin. They found that a compound called B2, which promotes the formation of larger inclusions, paradoxically appeared to reduce toxicity in cellular disease models, possibly by reducing the overall number of inclusions.