BioCentury
ARTICLE | Distillery Therapeutics

Therapeutics: Caspase-1 (CASP1); α-synuclein (SNCA)

September 1, 2016 7:00 AM UTC

Patient sample and cell culture studies suggest inhibiting CASP1 could help treat PD. In postmortem brain tissue samples from PD patients, CASP1 was highly expressed in Lewy bodies. In a human dopaminergic cell line, a tool compound that activates the inflammasome increased CASP1 activity, levels of truncated α-synuclein and α-synuclein aggregation and decreased viability compared with no treatment. Also in the tool compound-treated cell line, shRNA targeting CASP1 or the CASP1 inhibitor VX-765 increased viability compared with scrambled shRNA or vehicle. Next steps could include testing CASP1 inhibition in animal models of PD...