Researchers Neutralize Parkinson's Dopamine Killers

futurity.org writes with news that Iowa State researchers have made a breakthrough that could eventually lead to a cure for Parkinson's. Identifying the protein that kills the dopamine-producing cells in the brain has allowed the researchers to disable it and could be the first step in the development of new treatments. "Now, Kanthasamy’s group is looking for additional compounds that also can serve to neutralize protein kinase-C. By identifying more compounds that perform the function of neutralizing kinase-C, researchers are more likely to locate one that works well and has few side effects. This discovery is expected to provide new treatment options to stop the progression of the disease or even cure it. 'Once we find the compound, we need to make sure it’s safe. If everything goes well, it could take about 10 years, and then we might be able to see something that will truly make a difference in the lives of people with this disorder,' says Kanthasamy."

Comments

Re:huh?

[icebike]

It might do it for you if you had the disease.

If the side effects are more tolerable than the disease itself most people would opt to use the medicine. Waiting for perfect solutions has never really worked, especially for diseases that slowly rob you of any ability to manage your daily life.

Re:Hmm, how safe is safe enough?

[ColdWetDog]

Since the disease leads to paralysis then death how safe does it have to be to be effective? If the cure kills 5% of the people that take it I would think that will be less than the 10 year delay in getting a "perfect" cure out of the lab and through FDA testing.

Firstly, there are drugs that are moderately effective in Parkinson's Disease - not curative, but they do significantly improve patient functioning. Secondly, and most importantly, they found enzyme that they affects dopamine levels. They HAVE NOT (at least as far as I can tell from TFA) found that they can reverse the clinical entity known as Parkinson's disease by altering the function of that enzyme. That's first.

Then they have to find something (a drug or other treatment modality) that alters enzyme function that can get into brain (not easy) and not trash everything else in sight and / or create more problems than it solves.In this case, the bar is going to be set fairly high.

There are countless potential medical breakthroughs stuck at this stage. Very interesting, likely very important. Very speculative.

Re:Skepticism may be warranted, here.

[smellsofbikes]

There are a bunch of different types of protein kinase c (known as isozymes: they do the same general thing, reduce the energy it takes for compound A to turn into compound B, but they're different enzymes) so one possibility is targeting only the PKC that's in the brain, and another would be to target only this specific isozyme, but I can't find anything that says *which* isozyme this one is.

Personally, I'm more curious about why PKC is doing this: if we could figure out how/why the dopamine-producing cells are getting killed by PKC and reduce their vulnerability, that seems like it would be a less systemic way of getting the same result than trying to reduce PKC's activity. It'd likely have fewer side-effects since it would only affect the cells getting attacked, rather than all the other cells that need PKC for their normal function.

Re:Cure, eh?

[mea37]

I don't know your intentions, but you seem to be insenuating a shift in the approach medicne is taking. I'd say there's not really a change.

Big breakthroughs in early medicne were things like antibiotics. Because the diseases they treat are caused by bacteria, and because you can eliminate all of the bacteria causing a given illness, cure is a reasonable goal.

Viral or fungal infections, or cancers, are similarly things where it makes sense to hope for a cure. Any condition that's caused by somethign attacking your otherwise-functional body might potentially be cured.

But as our lives get longer, and the number of deaths attributed to bacteria, etc. decrease, more and more of the conditions that have our attention are caused by some abnormal function of the body itself. The body is a complex and dynamic place; it's a bit much to hope that acute administration of a chemical will forever alter whatever defect is causing a problem. Suppose, for example, that the cause is ultimately genetic; then every cell is propagating the root cause. If you can interfere with the operation of the disease so as to eliminate - or sometimes even just reduce - symptoms, that's a great result; but it probably does mean you'll be on a maintenance medicine.

Modern medicine is still looking for cures, but the problems we're facing are a lot harder now that the lowest-hanging fruit has been taken.