Robert Edwards
UCSF neurologist Robert Edwards, MD, has won a prestigious research award from the McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience. Edwards will receive $300,000 over three years to advance studies on Parkinson’s disease. He is one of six recipient’s of the “2009 Neuroscience of Brain Disorders Awards,” out of a total of 143 scientists who competed for the prize.
Edwards will deepen his investigations of a protein called alpha-synuclein, which appears to cause the degeneration that occurs in Parkinson’s and several related disorders, including Lewy Body Dementia and Multiple System Atrophy. These are now considered “synucleinopathies”. Despite the fact that alpha-synuclein has a central role in these diseases, its actual contribution to pathogenesis -- and even its normal function -- remain very poorly understood, Edwards says.
“This severely limits our ability to intervene therapeutically in the degenerative process. Although current treatment for Parkinson’s is very effective at treating symptoms early in the disease, the underlying degenerative process continues inexorably to produce severe disability, and no current treatment addresses the underlying degeneration.”
Edwards is exploring how alpha-synuclein affects what goes on within cellular structures called mitochondria. Mitochondria have long been implicated in Parkinson’s disease, but their precise role in the disease also remains poorly understood. Edwards is. tracking ways in which synuclein influences the behavior of mitochondria to impact the survival and functioning of nerve cells.
In preliminary work, Edwards has found that alpha-synuclein affects specific properties of mitochondria.
“We will use these observations as an entry point to understand how the function of alpha-synuclein contributes to its role in normal physiology and to its pathologic role in Parkinson's disease,” Edwards says. “The results will indicate how alpha-synuclein affects mitochondria at both molecular and cellular levels. In the process, the work will help us to understand the physiological role of alpha-synuclein in neurons.
“Because mitochondria appear to have an important role in Parkinson's, the results will suggest mechanisms that contribute to neural degeneration. What we learn might enable us to produce a long-sought animal model for the disease, as well as ways to prevent or arrest the degenerative process.”
