Monday, April 1, 2013

Immuno-therapy For Parkinson's Disease ?

   From the labs of the University of Pennsylvania comes an important supportive paper to the growing body of evidence that alpha-synuclein (AS) travels through the brain in a prion-like manner effecting anatomically connected regions, inducing Lewy body formation and causing the cell death of dopaminergic neurons.
   This study suggests that "templated recruitment and transmission" is the mechanism of disease. 
   The results also suggest that delivering antibodies to the brain of affected animals to bind to extracellular AS would be a way of interrupting the spreading process and theoretically halting the disease.
Science 2012;338(6109):949-953

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