The nonprofit SPARK NS has announced the five recipients of the 2024 SPARK NS Parkinson’s Disease Translational Research Program that’s designed to foster the clinical development of promising therapies for Parkinson’s disease. The two-year program provides each scientist with up to $2 million, depending on the achievement…

A buildup of fat-like lipid molecules may help to promote the inability of dopaminergic neurons, the nerve cells that are lost in people with Parkinson’s disease, to divide and grow as they should, researchers suggest. Further understanding of the role of lipids in neurodegeneration “has the potential to open…

A protein called STAT3 protected nerve cells from degeneration and improved behavioral and motor outcomes in a rat model of Parkinson’s disease, a study reveals. STAT3 potentially offers “a new avenue for treatment against Parkinson’s,” researchers wrote in the study “STAT3 protects dopaminergic neurons against…

Researchers have developed a new mouse model that affects nerve cells in the eye that could help in studying disease mechanisms and treatment approaches in Parkinson’s disease. The mice are lacking the protein VPS35 in specific cells of the eye and developed protein deposits that contain alpha-synuclein, neurodegeneration, and…

Nearly one-quarter of deceased athletes with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a neurodegenerative disease associated with repetitive head impacts, experienced Parkinson’s disease-like symptoms during their lives, according to a study researchers said is the largest to date exploring the links among contact sports, CTE, and parkinsonism. The researchers found that…

Clumps of RNA-binding proteins have been discovered in the nucleus of nerve cells derived from people with Parkinson’s disease, according to a new study. Generated by a “self-propagating” cycle, these clumps were different and separate from those made from the protein alpha-synuclein, a well-known feature of Parkinson’s. A second…

Two proteins, Aplp1 and Lag3, pair to allow toxic aggregates of alpha-synuclein — a hallmark of Parkinson’s disease — into nerve cells and help it spread across the brain, according to a study in mice. “Now that we know how Aplp1 and Lag3 interact, we have a new way…

BrainTale’s noninvasive imaging analysis software, BrainTale-care, may be able to distinguish Parkinson’s disease from atypical parkinsonism. That’s according to data from an advanced MRI technique, called diffusion tensor imaging, that measures the diffusion of water molecules in the brain’s white matter. White matter contains nerve fibers…

An imaging agent for positron emission tomography (PET) scans allowed researchers to visualize, for the first time, abnormal alpha-synuclein protein clumps in the brains of living patients with Parkinson’s disease, a study showed. By detecting a hallmark feature of Parkinson’s found in relatively lower abundance in the brain compared…

Researchers at University College London (UCL) have developed a test that accurately identified Parkinson’s disease up to seven years before its symptoms manifested by measuring levels of eight biomarkers in the blood, a study reports. “We set out to use state-of-the-art technology to find new and better biomarkers for…