Issue link: http://life-technologies.uberflip.com/i/215145
Research summary What is Parkinson's disease? Parkinson's disease (PD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder that affects 1% of people over age 60 and more than 5 million people worldwide [1]. PD results primarily from the selective loss of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra. The loss of these neurons first affects movement, but then later affects cognitive function, with late-stage disease often being accompanied by dementia. The absence of physiologically relevant cellular models for PD represents a major bottleneck for PD research. Novel models are urgently needed to accelerate the discovery of disease mechanisms and drug targets, as well as for screening purposes. This could rapidly translate into a wide range of clinical and therapeutic applications. Dopamine system Frontal lobe Striatum Substantia nigra Ventral tegmental area Generating Parkinson's Disease Models - Dr. Birgitt Schuele, ISSCR 2013 Collaboration summary Recently, Life Technologies partnered with the Parkinson's Institute in Sunnyvale, California, to develop PD model systems using donor fibroblasts that have been collected at the Institute. Here, we describe the first step in creating the model systems—the generation of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). In this first step, iPSCs were generated and evaluated using both cellular and genetic analysis tools to confirm successful reprogramming. This story is the first in a series 5 Life Technologies | Parkinson's cell model to be published; future studies will involve differentiating the iPSCs to dopaminergic neurons or other relevant cell types to study the associated cell types involved in PD, genomic editing of the lines using TAL-based or other technologies in order to study the impact of specific mutations within the genome, and then using the analytical tools of Life Technologies to observe PD-relevant phenotypes within the resulting cells. With this work, we hope to demonstrate how systems can be developed to identify drugs that may ameliorate the processes that underlie PD, or to understand the environmental factors that impact the development of PD.