04 Apr 2021
α-Synuclein immunotherapy is in its infancy, with few trials posting results yet. The first two completed Phase 2s, of Biogen’s cinpanemab and Prothena and Roche’s prasinezumab, were both negative. However, while the cinpanemab study was fully negative, prasinezumab posted positive results on some secondary motor measures. At the 15th International Conference on Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Diseases, held virtually March 9–14,
Gennaro Pagano of Roche gave researchers a first look at prespecified subgroup analyses from this study, called PASADENA. It turned out that subgroups of participants whose disease progressed fastest benefited more from prasinezumab, with more slowing of motor decline. Pagano believes this is because the signal-to-noise ratio in these subgroups was greater, allowing the small effect of prasinezumab to be discerned more readily in this slow disease.
Increased physical activity attenuated
APOE ε4-related vulnerability to early cognitive decline in Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients, a retrospective cohort study found.
“This study provides Class II evidence that increased physical activity was associated with decreased
APOE ε4-related early cognitive decline in PD patients,” wrote Jin-Sun Jun, MD, of Hallym University in Seoul, Korea, and co-authors in
“This protective effect did not appear to be mediated by striatal dopaminergic function,” they added.
Jun and colleagues analyzed data from the Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative. All 173 patients (baseline mean age: 63 years) were recently diagnosed with idiopathic PD and had abnormal dopamine transporter (DAT) imaging while untreated. In all, 27% were
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Credit: Oliver Dietze
In their study, which is now published in the journal
Nature Aging, they show that the level of non-coding RNAs in the blood of a Parkinson s patient can be used to track the course of the disease. For their study, the team led by bioinformatics professor Andreas Keller and his doctoral student Fabian Kern created and analyzed the molecular profiles of more than 5,000 blood samples from over 1,600 Parkinson s patients. This resulted in around 320 billion data points, which the researchers analyzed for biomarkers of Parkinson s disease using artificial intelligence methods. Our project is among the largest RNA biomarker studies in the world, says Andreas Keller, head of the research group for clinical bioinformatics at Saarland University and spokesperson for the Center for Bioinformatics at the Saarland Informatics Campus.
Abstract
The Aligning Science Across Parkinson’s (ASAP) initiative was set up to improve understanding of the biology underlying the onset and progression of Parkinson’s disease. With an emphasis on open science and collaboration, we have assembled a research network led by nearly 100 investigators to explore the pathology of Parkinson’s disease, and this network will soon expand to include researchers working on relevant (dys)-functional neural circuits. We have also contributed to large-scale genetics and patient cohort initiatives related to the disease. We hope that these actions, and others planned for the future, will deepen our knowledge of the molecular mechanisms underlying the origin and evolution of Parkinson’s disease and, ultimately, contribute to the development of novel therapies.