By: Angela Herring

Posted on: NORTH EASTERN UNIVERSITY website

Professor Barbara Woczak, professor of pharmaceutics and Brendan Harmon, PhD student presented their innovative treatment for Parkinson's disease at the EXPERIMANTAL BIOLOGY 2013 conference in Boston (photo (Heratch Ekmekjian.

Each year, 60000 new adults are diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, a degenerative disease of the nervous system that causes a collection of symptoms including tremors, slow movement and changes in speech. The medications currently administered to Parkinson's disease patients help them recover some of their movement control that was lost in the disease but do not treat the cause of the disease, said Barbara Woczak, professor of pharmacy at BOUVE COLLEGE OF HEALTH SCIENCES.

"Parkinson's disease is caused by the death of neurons from dopamine channels in a key area of ​​the brain responsible for movement called the "substanua nigra"" says Barbara Wojczak. If you want to treat Parkinson's disease at its root, she adds, you need to treat these neurons. In a study whose results were published this week at the EXPERIMENTAL BIOLOGY conference in Boston. Barbara Woczak and research student Brendan Harmon have proposed a therapeutic approach that does just that. In addition, the treatment is simple and easy to perform.

A natural protein called GDNF GLIAL CELL LINE DERIVED NEUROTROPIC FACTOR, protects certain cells - including those that produce dopamine - against cell death and by activating survival and by encouraging growth pathways, according to Woczak. In a lab petri dish, GDNF does an excellent job of restoring the function of damaged and dying cells and preventing further loss of dopamine-producing cells. But introducing GDNF into the animal's brain is not simple. Crossing the blood brain barrier (BBB) ​​has proven to be the most difficult challenge for Parkinson's disease researchers. But in a previous study, Wojczak's lab showed that GDNF can be injected into the right place in the brain with a simple method through the nose.

For it to work, the patients have to take it again and again because it breaks down in the body. In the new study, we took one step forward when Harmon infected brain cells with the gene for GDNF. Harmon says. "It's like a factory that produces the protein inside the brain." The nanoparticles were produced by COPERNICUS THERAPEUTICS.

Harmon initially showed that nasal administration of the nanoparticles increased the production of GDNF in the brain. So he showed that the treatment reduced the loss of dopamine-producing cells in rats in a Parkinson's model. Now the rat brain can make its own medicine.

Parkinson's patients begin to show signs of the disease only when 80-90% of the dopamine-producing cells die. Woczak says. In this situation GDNF has limited use. But for those who have recently been diagnosed or are at a high risk level, this new treatment represents the protection and restoration of nerve cells, "If it is given in the early stages of the disease, when the patients begin to show the first signs, then we can slow down the rate of development of the disease or delay the appearance of the severe symptoms," says Woetz 'Ack.

The research group hopes to continue to reveal different aspects such as frequency and dosage and activity in other animal models.

For the original article in English...