BioCentury
ARTICLE | Targets & Mechanisms

Priming the PD pump

July 10, 2014 7:00 AM UTC

The precise cause of neurodegeneration in Parkinson's disease remains unknown, and as a result no one has been able to develop a truly disease-modifying therapy. Now, independent teams in Europe and the U.S. have found that the dopamine transporter VMAT2 has a potentially causative role in the disease1,2-figuring out how to enhance its activity is the next challenge.

PD involves degeneration of nigrostriatal dopaminergic neurons, leading to insufficient dopamine levels in brain circuits that influence cognition and motor function. Symptomatic therapies for PD work by raising dopamine levels at synapses of affected neurons but do not arrest the degeneration of dopaminergic neurons. Eventually, the drugs become ineffective...