Serge Przedborski
Columbia University, NY·Neuroscience
Parkinson's disease (PD) and related disorders are called synucleinopathies. After Alzheimer's disease, they are the most common group of brain-degenerating diseases.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Pharmacology
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
Parkinson's disease
synucleinopathy
alpha-synuclein
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2028
What they work on
- Evaluate whether virus-delivered anti-α-Syn single-chain antibody fragments (scFvs) improve gut function and reduce gut pathology in transgenic L61 mice, which overproduce alpha-synuclein, using GI function tests and tissue analysis.
- Assess whether gut-targeted scFv gene therapy protects movement, cognition and brain tissue in mice given gut injections of α-Syn preformed fibrils (PFF), seed-like clumps that spread pathology toward the brain.
- Compare secreted and non-secreted anti-α-Syn scFvs delivered by AAV-MaCPNS2, a viral vector that reaches the gut's nervous system, including blood toxicology and organ tissue checks for safety.
More about the research
In these diseases, clumps of a small nerve-ending protein called alpha-synuclein (α-Syn) build up in nerve cells. PD is diagnosed by its movement problems, but other symptoms often appear years earlier. More than 80% of patients report constipation, which can begin decades before diagnosis. About half of patients have α-Syn clumps in the gut before the brain. This suggests the disease may start in the gut's own nervous system and spread to the brain.
Why it matters
Gut problems such as constipation affect most people with Parkinson's disease and can appear long before movement symptoms. If antibody fragments delivered to the gut can clear abnormal alpha-synuclein, this approach could lead to an early-stage treatment for Parkinson's disease and related dementing conditions. It could also help test the idea that the disease spreads from the gut to the brain.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Torsten Falk
University of Arizona, AZ·Pharmacology
Test whether the glycopeptide PNA5 improves memory and thinking deficits in male mice injected with alpha-synuclein preformed fibrils, compared with scrambled-glycopeptide and vehicle controls, using behavioral tests.
Shermali Gunawardena
University at Buffalo, NY·Neuroscience
Test whether the N-terminal region of α-synuclein, the Parkinson's-linked protein, controls how mitochondria break into smaller pieces, using transgenic Drosophila carrying N-terminal deletions.
Qinglan Ling
University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, MA·Genetics·Early-career
Develop and optimize a mitochondria-targeting base editor, a tool that changes single DNA letters, to create a truncating mutation in the mouse MTATP6 gene and generate a conditional mouse model.
The school
Columbia University: 89 labs on PI Pages, $1.4B a year on research, 625 research doctorates a year.
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