{"id":223632,"date":"2025-10-18T15:05:13","date_gmt":"2025-10-18T20:05:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/a-tiny-peptide-can-freeze-parkinsons-proteins-before-they-turn-toxic"},"modified":"2025-10-18T15:05:13","modified_gmt":"2025-10-18T20:05:13","slug":"a-tiny-peptide-can-freeze-parkinsons-proteins-before-they-turn-toxic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/a-tiny-peptide-can-freeze-parkinsons-proteins-before-they-turn-toxic","title":{"rendered":"A Tiny Peptide Can Freeze Parkinson\u2019s Proteins Before They Turn Toxic"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/a-tiny-peptide-can-freeze-parkinsons-proteins-before-they-turn-toxic.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>As <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/parkinsons-disease\">Parkinson\u2019s disease<\/a> progresses, harmful protein clumps build up in the brain, blocking communications between neurons and killing them off \u2013 but what if we could prevent these clusters from forming?<\/p>\n<p>Researchers led by a team from the University of Bath in the UK have achieved just that in a <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Caenorhabditis_elegans\">basic worm model<\/a> of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/go\/IYl\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_self\">Parkinson\u2019s<\/a>. They engineered a peptide, a small amino acid chain, to essentially keep a protein called alpha-synuclein locked in its healthy shape. This <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Protein_folding\">prevented the misfolding<\/a> that leads to clumps.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/parkinsons-discovery-suggests-we-could-have-an-fda-approved-treatment-already\">potential treatment<\/a> checks several important boxes: it\u2019s durable, and it can survive inside cells without causing any toxic side effects.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As Parkinson\u2019s disease progresses, harmful protein clumps build up in the brain, blocking communications between neurons and killing them off \u2013 but what if we could prevent these clusters from forming? Researchers led by a team from the University of Bath in the UK have achieved just that in a basic worm model of Parkinson\u2019s. [\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-223632","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\/223632","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=223632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223632\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}