Millions of people suffer to control their body movements as neurodegenerative disorders are afflicting more people every year.
With a $1.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, U researcher Stefan Pulst is searching for a drug that would reduce the severity of any one of the neurodegenerative disorders. Pulst is using the same mouse models that won U researcher Mario Capecchi his Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology last year.
“If you have too much calcium flow, it could enhance the damage of nerve cells,” Pulst said. “(But) if you decrease the function of the calcium, it could help.”
Pulst started working in the 1990s trying to identify genes that caused a certain neurodegenerative disease that affects the cerebellum, the part of the brain that controls movement and coordination. Pulst and a team of researchers received funding from NIH in 1996 when they identified a genetic mutation or protein in Parkinson’s disease that could help reduce the effects of the disease if introduced to other proteins.
Through further tests, Pulst has seen that when the mutant protein and another protein significant to Parkinson’s disease bind together, the mutant protein becomes less abundant.
“We’re introducing it to other nerve cells to see if it could undo the damage of neurodegenerative disorders,” Pulst said.
Daniel Scoles, a research associate professor in neurology, runs a lab that tests for drugs that could have a positive effect on one type of the disorder.
“The objective is to identify these drugs,” Scoles said. “It’s believed that certain mutant (genes) cause the disease.”
The NIH grant is to be used over the next five years in some of Pulst’s labs working on neurodegenerative disorders. Although the grant helps defray costs, Pulst’s labs sometimes cost more than $1 million every year to fund.
“It’s very expensive to do mouse experiments,” Pulst said. “We treat our mice very nice.”
Pulst applies annually for other grants, especially from the NIH. He said he also receives a $40,000 grant from the National Ataxia Foundation, a group that focuses on curing one type of the disorder.
Scoles said the next step in research is to prepare tests for drug screening. The research team will set up about 40,000 different drugs to see if any of them reacts to a hybrid chemical between a gene from a firefly and a mutant protein from the disorder.
“Any one of those drugs could turn off the light (from the firefly gene),” Scoles said.
After testing for different drugs, the research team will move on to mouse models to see whether any of the drugs reduces problems from the degenerative disorder.
“It could be fairly soon before we (find a drug that works),” Scoles said. “We’re two to three weeks away from preparing our mice and having all the things in hand.”