{"id":109133,"date":"2020-06-25T20:04:17","date_gmt":"2020-06-26T03:04:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/06\/single-gene-treatment-cures-mice-of-parkinsons-within-three-months"},"modified":"2020-06-25T20:04:17","modified_gmt":"2020-06-26T03:04:17","slug":"single-gene-treatment-cures-mice-of-parkinsons-within-three-months","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/06\/single-gene-treatment-cures-mice-of-parkinsons-within-three-months","title":{"rendered":"Single-gene treatment cures mice of Parkinson\u2019s within three months"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/single-gene-treatment-cures-mice-of-parkinsons-within-three-months.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>While there are ways to alleviate some symptoms, there is currently no way to prevent or cure Parkinson\u2019s disease, so the prospect of a one-off treatment that completely eliminates it is certainly an exciting one. While such a therapy remains a while off, scientists have demonstrated an exciting proof of concept in mice, whereby inhibiting a single gene as a one-time treatment eradicated the disease entirely, and kept it at bay for the remainder of their lives.<\/p>\n<p>The research was carried out at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), and centers on a protein called PTB, which plays a role in which genes are switch on and off in a cell. The team was experimenting with techniques whereby the gene that encodes for PTB is switched off so researchers can determine the flow-on effects of a reduction in the that protein on other cell types, and found peculiar results when working with connective tissue cells called fibroblasts.<\/p>\n<p>In one experiment, the team created a cell line that was permanently lacking PTB, and after a couple of weeks found that there was only a small amount of fibroblasts remaining in the dish, which was brimming with neurons instead. Building on this, the team was able to use a single treatment to inhibit the activity of PTB in mice, which reprogrammed support cells in the brain called astrocytes into neurons that produce the neurotransmitter dopamine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While there are ways to alleviate some symptoms, there is currently no way to prevent or cure Parkinson\u2019s disease, so the prospect of a one-off treatment that completely eliminates it is certainly an exciting one. While such a therapy remains a while off, scientists have demonstrated an exciting proof of concept in mice, whereby inhibiting [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-109133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109133"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109133\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}