idw – Informationsdienst Wissenschaft

Nachrichten, Termine, Experten

Grafik: idw-Logo
Grafik: idw-Logo

idw - Informationsdienst
Wissenschaft

Science Video Project
idw-Abo

idw-News App:

AppStore

Google Play Store



Instance:
Share on: 
10/14/2020 13:00

Goethe University partner in US$ 7.2 million research project on Parkinson’s disease

Markus Bernards Public Relations und Kommunikation
Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main

    About ten percent of Parkinson’s cases can be ascribed to mutations in the LRRK2 gene. Five research teams from the University of California in San Diego, Goethe University Frankfurt and the University of Konstanz want to explain in the next few years how mutations in the LRRK2 gene trigger Parkinson’s disease and what possible targets there are for drugs. The US-American initiative “Aligning Science Across Parkinson’s” has made the equivalent of € 6.1 million available for this project.

    In the early 2000s, it was discovered that in many Parkinson’s patients a certain enzyme called LRRK2 mutates and evidently plays a significant role in five to ten percent of hereditary Morbus Parkinson and between one and five percent of the spontaneous form. LRRK2 is an enzyme that attaches phosphate groups to other proteins in the human cell and is far more active than normal in the brain cells of Parkinson’s patients, leading it to block transport processes in the cell. Many inhibitors against the LRRK2 enzyme have already been tested in the past, but they are not sufficiently effective or their side-effects are too severe.

    The five teams from USA and Germany want now to elucidate in detail the enzyme’s structure and how it works in the cell and thus create a basis for the targeted production of inhibitors. A first three-dimensional structure of the LRRK2 protein was recently published by the research team in the journal Nature. The initiative “Aligning Science Across Parkinson’s”, which is backed by The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, is supporting the project financially.

    Co-Project Manager Stefan Knapp, Professor for Pharmaceutical Chemistry at Goethe University, explains: “By comparing LRRK2 mutations in Parkinson’s patients with normal LRRK2, we want to find out which tasks LRRK2 assumes in the cell, how the enzyme moves three-dimensionally, and how the mutated LRRK2 contributes to nerve cells dying off. While the expertise of our colleagues in the USA lies in various imaging methods, here in Frankfurt we’ll develop chemical probes to localize and study LRRK2 in cells and we will produce recombinant LRRK2 variants that will help us to understand their three-dimensional structure.”

    Co-Project Manager Florian Stengel, Professor for Cellular Proteostasis at the University of Konstanz, says: “In the framework of this project, we here in Konstanz want to identify the cellular interaction partners of LRRK2. In this way, we’ll be able to complete our picture of its cellular role and thus make it possible to develop a drug against LRRK2 mutated Morbus Parkinson.”

    Pictures to download: www.uni-frankfurt.de/92946466

    Caption: Professor Stefan Knapp, Institute of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Goethe University, Frankfurt (Foto: Uwe Dettmar)


    Contact for scientific information:

    Professor Stefan Knapp
    Institute of Pharmaceutical Chemistry
    Goethe University Frankfurt
    Phone: +49 69 798-29871
    knapp@pharmchem.uni-frankfurt.de

    Professor Florian Stengel
    Department of Biology / Laboratory of Cellular Proteostasis and Mass Spectrometry
    University of Konstanz
    Phone: +49 7531 88-5172
    florian.stengel@uni-konstanz.de


    More information:

    https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32814344/ Article on the first three-dimensional structure of the LKKR2 protein: C K Deniston, J Salogiannis, S Mathea, D M Snead, I Lahiri, M Matyszewski, O Donosa, R Watanabe, J Böhning, A K Shiau, S Knapp, E Villa, S L Reck-Peterson, A E Leschziner. Structure of LRRK2 in Parkinson's disease and model for microtubule interaction. Nature. 2020 Aug 19


    Images

    Criteria of this press release:
    Business and commerce, Journalists, Scientists and scholars
    Biology, Medicine
    transregional, national
    Cooperation agreements, Research projects
    English


     

    Help

    Search / advanced search of the idw archives
    Combination of search terms

    You can combine search terms with and, or and/or not, e.g. Philo not logy.

    Brackets

    You can use brackets to separate combinations from each other, e.g. (Philo not logy) or (Psycho and logy).

    Phrases

    Coherent groups of words will be located as complete phrases if you put them into quotation marks, e.g. “Federal Republic of Germany”.

    Selection criteria

    You can also use the advanced search without entering search terms. It will then follow the criteria you have selected (e.g. country or subject area).

    If you have not selected any criteria in a given category, the entire category will be searched (e.g. all subject areas or all countries).