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The Jackson Laboratory has received a $1.8 million grant from the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s disease research.
That research will be conducted in cooperation with the New York Stem Cell Foundation and the Montreal Neurological Institute in Canada.
Together the organizations hope to advance disease modeling, with a focus on a specific gene associated with Parkinson’s — GBA1 — that encodes an enzyme that breaks down organic molecules that don’t dissolve in water as part of the cell’s recycling process.
People with that gene have a higher risk for Parkinson’s, which often sets in earlier and progresses faster for them. Yet, researchers still don’t know how the gene contributes to the disease.
“One of MJFF’s goals is to support the development of scalable and reproducible research reagents, models, and services that can help advance understanding of Parkinson’s disease biology across the field,” Nicole Polinski, director of research resources at the foundation, said in a statement. “GBA1 remains one of the most important genetic risk factors linked to Parkinson’s disease, and efforts like this aim to standardize and characterize accessible human cell modeling systems that may help researchers more consistently investigate disease mechanisms and evaluate potential therapeutic approaches.”
It’s not the only genetic variant associated with Parkinson’s but whose exact role and contribution to the disease’s development and progression has eluded researchers. This research may help scientists make progress toward unraveling those medical mysteries.
“Our goal is to standardize and characterize human cell modeling systems that directly link genetic changes to what happens in the cell, and to do so in a way that researchers and industry partners can readily use to develop new approaches for studying Parkinson’s disease and evaluating potential therapies,” Stefan Semrau, co-director of the Jackson Lab-New York Stem Cell Foundation collaborative and the principal investigator for the project, said in a statement.
The actor Michael J. Fox, who was diagnosed with early onset Parkinson’s at age 29 but kept it secret until 1998, co-founded the Michael J. Fox Foundation in 2000 to advance research leading to treatments and possibly a cure for the disease.
Jackson Lab has nearly 3,000 employees in Maine, Connecticut, California, New York, Florida and Japan.