Awarded by Aligning Science Across Parkinson’s (ASAP), in partnership with The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research (MJFF), the two grants of $9 million each will support research aimed at addressing key gaps in understanding the development and progression of Parkinson’s disease.
Parkinson’s disease (PD) is one of the fastest growing neurological disorders in the world, yet there are no treatments that can slow or cure the condition. The CRN brings together leading researchers around the world with the aim of mapping the biological blueprint of Parkinson’s disease and building a standardised toolkit of global research resources to help turn discoveries into treatments.
This next phase of the CRN initiative focuses on understanding why Parkinson’s disease varies across individuals, and advancing discoveries toward more precise diagnostics and therapies for patients.
Professor Andrew Sharott, who is Associate Director of the MRC CoRE in Restorative Neural Dynamics, will be the Lead-Investigator on a team examining whether different sleep problems in Parkinson’s are caused by specific disruptions to distinct brain oscillations. Working in collaboration with Dr Angelina Maric and Dr Daniela Noain ( University of Zurich) Professor Derk -Jan Dijk (University of Surrey) and Professor Aleksandar Videnovic (Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard University), the team will test whether restoring these activities to their healthy state will improve these specific aspects of sleep and slow down the progression of nerve cell loss.
Professor Laura Parkkinen, Professor of Translational Neuropathology and Director of the Oxford Brain Bank, who is also a Group Leader at the new UK DRI Parkinson’s disease Centre, will serve as a Co-Investigator on a team examining the role of a-synuclein and protein misfolding in the development and progression of Parkinson’s disease. Working in collaboration with Professors Matthias Mann (Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry) and Günter Höglinger and Franziska Hopfner (LMU University Hospital), the team aims to understand why Parkinson's progresses so differently between patients despite shared clinical and pathological features.
Read the full story on the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences website.