Michael J. Fox Foundation supports Chilean laboratory to develop therapy against Parkinson's.

The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Research of the Parkinson’s gave a competitive fund of more than one hundred million pesos to the Center for Integrative Biology of the Universidad Mayor, directed by Felipe Court, to research for a possible therapy against the neurodegenerative disease that It has no cure.

"They are a study where new mechanisms that contribute to Parkinson's disease are discovered," says Court, biologist and doctor of Neuroscience.

“We found in the laboratory, that blocking a mecanism of the neurons, when they die, they produce the disease, we could block the development or progression of the symptoms associated with the disease in animal models," he explains.

Slight tremors and changes in posture, in the way of walking or in facial expressions, are the first symptoms of Parkinson's. As the disease progresses, others become more severe, such as stiffness of the limbs, similar to that of people suffering from arthritis.

"What is important is that until now it has not been used as a pharmacological treatment of this type, therapy is usually associated with blocking the death of neurons, and what we are doing is blocking the degeneration of the projections of neurons, it's a new therapeutic target”, Said Court.

During Parkinson’s, neurons that are involved in movement, which are located in one region of the brain, send information to another region of the brain. But what it really does is release a substance called dopamine in this second region where the projections are sent.

"What we have found that occurs in Parkinson’s, is that the first thing to disappear, to degenerate, are these projections that will be releasing dopamine, but until now, all the pharmacological studies were to be able to block the death of the neurons, not the projection that see toward the other region od the brain. And that mechanism is our target (to block it pharmacologically). "

In the laboratory, to animal models induced with Parkinson’s, says Court, they are supplied with a compound in water.

"It is a pharmacological therapy. We see how it delays or modifies the motor symptoms, in these two years what we are going to do is revalidate in preclinical models, in animal models, if the blocking of this degenerative event really produces a delay in the clinical symptoms We had already done it, obviously, we already had some preliminary data that we presented in the project (to the Michael J. Fox Foundation), but now what we are going to do is a much more detailed study "

Chilean researcher Claudio Hetz, Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences, received about 270 million pesos two years ago from the Michael J. Fox Foundation to direct two research projects that are still under development.

"This project by Felipe Court seeks to try to stop a very important problem in Parkinson's, because before the neurons die, dopamine is produced, the connections in the circuit are lost, so here it tries to try drugs that attack this process", comments Hetz, director of the Millennium Institute of Biomedical Neuroscience.

If all goes well, if preclinical and clinical phases are approved, Court says that the idea is to synthesize the therapy into a drug that can be patented for use in Parkinson’s.