New Delhi : Scientists have, for the first time, directly visualised how Parkinson’s disease triggers in human brain tissue.
Using a newly developed technique called ASA-PD (Advanced Sensing of Aggregates for Parkinson’s Disease), researchers from the University of Cambridge and University College London, UK, observed, counted, and compared the protein clusters called alpha-synuclein oligomers in human brain tissue.
Oligomers have long been considered the likely culprits behind Parkinson’s, but until now, these tiny clusters — just a few nanometres long — escaped direct detection in human brain tissue.
Using ASA-PD with ultra-sensitive fluorescence microscopy, the team detected and analysed millions of oligomers in post-mortem brain tissue for the first time.
“This is the first time we’ve been able to look at oligomers directly in human brain tissue at this scale: it’s like being able to see stars in broad daylight,” said Dr. Rebecca Andrews, who conducted the work when she served as a postdoctoral researcher at Cambridge’s Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry.
“It opens new doors in Parkinson’s research,” she added.
Since oligomers are so small, their signal remains extremely weak. But ASA-PD maximises the signal while decreasing the background, dramatically boosting sensitivity so that scientists can observe and study individual alpha-synuclein oligomers.
The team examined post-mortem brain tissue samples from people with Parkinson’s and compared them to healthy individuals of similar age.
The results, reported in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering, revealed that oligomers exist in both healthy and Parkinson’s brains.
The main difference between disease and healthy brains appeared in the size of the oligomers, which grew larger, brighter, and more numerous in disease samples, suggesting a direct link to Parkinson’s progression.
The team also identified a sub-class of oligomers that appeared only in Parkinson’s patients, which could serve as the earliest visible markers of the disease, potentially years before symptoms appear.
“Oligomers have been the needle in the haystack, but now that we know where those needles are, it could help us target specific cell types in certain regions of the brain,” said Professor Lucien Weiss from Polytechnique Montréal, who co-led the research.
Weiss added that scientists can apply similar technologies to other neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s.
–IANS
