Webinar: A Team Approach to Curing Parkinson's Disease

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease in which specific cells in the brain die. Unfortunately, it remains incurable. Understanding why these brain cells die is critical to developing new therapies to protect them. Bi-allelic mutations in the PARK2 gene, which encodes the parkin protein, cause young-onset PD. Exactly how parkin specifically protects these neurons that otherwise die in PD, remains unknown.

Dr. Michael Schlossmacher’s team at Ottawa Hospital Research Institute recently found that parkin is highly oxidized in normal human brain. In studying this oxidation, the team found that whereas parkin oxidation was previously believed to be a loss-of-function event, it is in fact neuroprotective, as recently published in Acta Neuropathol. They found that parkin acts as a redox sensor to reduce reactive oxidative and electrophilic stress in neurons. The neutralization of these stressors leads to its own oxidation. This study was made possible, in part, with new parkin antibodies developed in collaboration with BioLegend and supported by the Michael J. Fox Foundation.

In this webinar, Drs. Schlossmacher and Tomlinson will provide an overview of what Parkinson's disease is and the collaborative approach their team has taken in studying this disease at the molecular level and creating new research tools.

Additional Q&A With Dr. Michael Schlossmacher:
Because of the time constraint and some audio issues in the original webinar, Dr. Schlossmacher graciously agreed to answer the webinar questions in this follow-up session.