Mohammad Shahnawaz
University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, TX·Neuroscience
Parkinson's disease, multiple system atrophy and dementia with Lewy bodies are brain diseases that share one culprit. In each, the protein alpha-synuclein misfolds and clumps together.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Biochemistry
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
alpha-synuclein
synucleinopathies
Parkinson's disease
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2027
What they work on
- Detect and amplify small amounts of alpha-synuclein strains from body fluids and brain tissue of patients with Parkinson's disease, multiple system atrophy and dementia with Lewy bodies, using the seeding-based PMCA (RT-QuIC) assay.
- Test whether different synucleinopathies carry distinct alpha-synuclein conformational strains or sub-strains, by comparing amplified products with biochemical, structural and biological techniques.
- Relate the structural features of amplified alpha-synuclein strains to their disease-causing behavior, laying groundwork for a biochemical test that tells synucleinopathies apart.
More about the research
Together they are called synucleinopathies. Yet the diseases look different in the clinic, progress differently and need different treatments. They are hard to tell apart early, especially Parkinson's versus multiple system atrophy, and they are often diagnosed only after brain damage has begun. This project asks whether each disease carries its own structural "strain" of misfolded alpha-synuclein that could be detected and told apart.
Why it matters
Patients with Parkinson's disease, multiple system atrophy and dementia with Lewy bodies are often hard to diagnose early and accurately, even though their outlook and treatment differ. A test that identifies disease-specific alpha-synuclein strains in body fluids could improve differential diagnosis, help sort patients into the right groups, guide enrollment in clinical trials and support personalized treatment.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Allison L Kraus
Case Western Reserve University, OH·Neuroscience
Define the age of onset, amount, brain location and chemical variety of tau seeds in diseased, normal, young and older human brains, using RT-QuIC seed amplification assays specific to 3R, 4R and 3R/4R tau.
Nicholas Seyfried
Emory University, GA·Biochemistry
Build a longitudinal Lewy body dementia registry under the Parkinson's Disease Biomarker Program, collecting clinical data and biospecimens to support validation of protein biomarkers.
Jesse Cedarbaum
Yale University, CT·Medicine & Clinical Research
Profile immune cells in the blood of all 100 RBD trial participants and in the CSF of 30 of them, using single-cell RNA sequencing and in vivo perturb-seq, to see how the anti-TNF drug adalimumab changes immune cell function.
The school
University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston: 25 labs on PI Pages, $419M a year on research, 340 research doctorates a year.
More about University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
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