Fall Issue — October 2007
The Little Protein that Could
Parkinson’s disease attracts plenty of media attention, mostly because it afflicts celebrities, such as actor Michael J. Fox, as well as people close to us. To date, there is no definitive test for Parkinson’s disease (PD) but Michael Schlossmacher, Canada Research Chair and associate professor at uOttawa and The Ottawa Hospital, is hoping that he and his team can change that.With funding from the Michael J. Fox Foundation, they have developed a test that can precisely measure levels of a nerve cell protein called alpha-synuclein in a patient’s spinal fluid collected through a routine spinal tap. This breakthrough marks an unprecedented jump forward: until now, scientists could only be certain about the patient’s condition by examining their brain post mortem.
Nerve cells in the brains of healthy people leak less than one per cent of their alpha-synuclein protein into the spinal fluid. In patients who have PD or a closely related condition that features both Parkinson’s and dementia, the leakage is even less. In contrast, nerve cells in the brains of people who have Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (a relative of “mad cow” disease that causes symptoms similar to those of patients with PD and dementia), spill large amounts of alpha-synuclein
from the nerve cells into the spinal fluid.
This is where the test reveals its vast potential. Schlossmacher believes that the level of alpha-synuclein in spinal fluid decreases as PD progresses. If he can prove it, the team will have created the first lab-based yardstick or “biomarker” for different stages of the disease.
“We urgently need something more objective than patients telling us, ‘I can’t get out of bed now’ or doctors estimating the degree of stiffness in a patient’s limb,” says Schlossmacher.
Having arrived at uOttawa last year from Harvard University, Schlossmacher is delighted to be working in Canada where he receives generous support from the Canada Research Chair program and uOttawa’s Parkinson’s Research Consortium. However, he is now looking for additional funding to confirm his team’s findings in more patients.
“Pharmaceutical companies have a vested interest in such a test,” says Schlossmacher. “They are sorely in need of a reliable biomarker that demonstrates whether new drugs interfere with the process of the disease.”
For drug companies, a diagnosis based on this test would cut the cost of clinical trials. It would prevent patients with related diseases from being accidentally included in clinical trials, distorting results and delaying the development of new therapies.
“Now we know what the culprit is and how to measure it,” says Schlossmacher. “It’s time to treat PD at its root cause, not just the symptoms.”
Michael Schlossmacher juggles with the possibility of finding a better treatment for Parkinson's Disease.