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: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.