Novel Peptide May Prevent Rise of Parkinson’s Disease

Dec, 2021 - By SMI

Researchers created a new peptide that prevents the misfolding proteins that are linked to Parkinson’s disease.

Misfolding proteins, alpha-synuclein (αS) are known to play an important role in the development of Parkinson’s disease producing harmful clumps known as Lewy bodies. These lewy bodies kill the vital brain cells. There are many studies conducted to prevent such protein dysfunction. Now a team of scientists from University of Bath developed a newly engineered peptide prevents these misfoldig proteins related to the development of Parkinson’s disease.

When the lewy bodies kill the neurons responsible for production of neurotransmitter dopamine, and the decrease in dopamine drives the decline of motor control observed in the patients with Parkinson’s disease, such as slowness of movements and tremors. The scientists at University of Bath was trying to find a peptide-based solution for this problem. The team screened more than 200,000 chains of amino acids to find one that would prevent misfolding of αS, which directed the team towards a peptide known as 4554W, which prevented αS from turning into lewy body in lab experiments on live cells. Later the team created two alterations to the parental sequence of amino-acid in order to create a new version, called as 4654W(N6A). According to the team, this new version, 4654W prevents the misfolding, toxicity, and aggregation of αS more effectively.

Furthermore, according to the team, the implications of this study are not only for Parkinson’s disease treatment, it would also be useful in other neurological diseases that occur due to misfolding proteins. Moreover, lewy bodies are related to different forms of dementia, thus, medication preventing these lewy bodies from developing could give extensive results. Although, the findings of this study need more work and testing to bring it into a clinical treatment, which would take long time. However, it the promising results of this study could help in the future to create novel drugs.