Someone very nicely PMed me a link to an article t
Post# of 148150
Quote:
Researchers have discovered how a cell surface protein called Aplp1 can play a role in spreading material responsible for Parkinson's disease from cell-to-cell in the brain.
Promisingly, an FDA-approved cancer drug that targets another protein called Lag3 – which interacts with Aplp1 – blocks the spread in mice, suggesting a potential therapy may already exist.
In a new paper, an international team of scientists describes how the two proteins work together to help harmful alpha-synuclein protein clumps get into brain cells.
"Now that we know how Aplp1 and Lag3 interact, we have a new way of understanding how alpha-synuclein contributes to the disease progression of Parkinson's disease," says Xiaobo Mao, a neuroscientist from Johns Hopkins University in the US.
The researchers gave normal mice the drug nivolumab/relatlimab, a melanoma medication that contains a Lag3 antibody, and found that it also stopped Aplp1 and Lag3 from interacting, again almost completely blocking the formation of disease-causing alpha-synuclein clumps in neurons.
https://www.sciencealert.com/parkinsons-disco...-treatment