(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Roughly one million Americans suffer from the neurodegenerative and deadly disease known as Parkinson's. There is currently no cure, but researchers say yeast may provide a new kind of treatment.
Parkinson's disease (PD) occurs as the nerve cells responsible for making dopamine progressively die. The disease is marked by a buildup of the protein alpha-syn in these types of cells. Studies have suggested aggregates of the protein contribute to PD. Therefore, developing a way to target them may serve as a treatment.
Researchers at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia studied rats with PD. They found Hsp104, a protein yeast uses to protect itself from protein buildup, significantly reduced the development of alpha-syn aggregates and the degeneration of neurons. Furthermore, Hsp104 not only prevented alpha-syn buildup, but also broke them down.
"Hsp104's ability to prevent and reverse pathogenic protein aggregation should be considered as a potential strategy for treating or reversing PD and other protein aggregation diseases," study authors write. They note, however, that further studies must be done first to evaluate the long-term safety of Hsp104 expression in neurons.
SOURCE: The Journal of Clinical Investigation, published online August 14, 2008
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