FORIPS

BAVARIAN RESEARCH NETWORK INDUCED PLURIPOTENT STEM CELLS

Human in-vitro model for the neuroinflammation in the idiopathic Parkinson Syndrom

The most common neurodegenerative movement disorder is Parkinson’s Disease (PD). Characteristic features are motor impairment such as slowness of movements, trembling and gait disturbances. Since age is an important risk factor for PD, it is of huge importance in an aging population to find therapies. Most of the studies to find better drugs for PD have been done in animal models. Many of these drugs failed, when tested in PD patients. The only possibility so far has been to investigate the diseased neurons of the brain after the PD patients have died. We propose to use skin cells from PD patients and reprogramm these into neurons and other surrounding cells in the brain called glia. This is a model, to study the disease, while the patient is still alive. Specifically, we will investigate, how the glial surrounding cells affect the survival of neurons. We will also test drugs that are protective for glial cells and neurons. The goal of this project is to identify key molecular events of neuroinflammation involved at early stages in PD and exploit these as potential points of therapeutic intervention.

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