Spring / Summer 2023 | Research 5
Researchers Discover New Parkinson ’ s Biomarker
In an enormous leap forward in the understanding of Parkinson ’ s disease ( PD ), researchers have discovered a new tool that can objectively reveal a key biological pathology of the disease : alpha-synuclein dysfunction in brain and body cells . The breakthrough opens a new chapter for research , with the promise of a future where every person living with Parkinson ’ s can expect improved care and treatments — and newly diagnosed individuals may never advance to full-blown symptoms .
The tool , called the a-synuclein seeding amplification assay ( aSyn-SAA ), can detect pathology in spinal fluid not only of people diagnosed with Parkinson ’ s , but also in individuals who have not yet been diagnosed or shown clinical symptoms of the disease , but are at a high risk of developing it .
The assay can confirm the presence of abnormal alpha-synuclein , detected in most people with PD , with astonishing accuracy : 93 percent of people with Parkinson ’ s who participated in the assay were proven to have abnormal alphasynuclein . “ We ’ ve never previously been able
“ The assay can confirm the presence of abnormal alphasynuclein , detected in most people with PD , with astonishing accuracy .”
to see in a living person whether they have this alpha-synuclein biological change happening in their body ,” says Todd Sherer , PhD , MJFF ’ s chief mission officer .
A protein normally found in the nervous system , alpha-synuclein — like amyloid in Alzheimer ’ s disease — can start to misfold and clump , damaging neurons and causing Parkinson ’ s disease to develop . It has previously been possible to confirm the presence of these clumps only through postmortem analysis .
The new tool cleverly takes advantage of a telling characteristic of pathologic alphasynuclein : it causes nearby , normal alphasynuclein to also misfold and clump . For the assay , spinal fluid samples are prepared with