Parkinson's Disease Stopped in Animal Model: Molecular "Tweezers" Break Up Toxic Aggregations of Proteins

In an article from ScienceDaily, scientists have found a way to stop Parkinson's disease in animals. Scientists at UCLA have successfully prevented a protein, a-synuclein, from "binding together and forming clumps, stopped their toxicity, and also break up existing clumps."  This is a huge breakthrough because a-synuclein is a common protein in all patients with Parkinson's disease.  In addition, when this protein binds in clumps, becomes toxic, and eventually kills brain neurons; it is thought to be a pathway to Parkinson's disease.

Scientists have developed a molecular tweezer, known as CLRO1, that is able to prevent a-synuclein from becoming toxic and causing brain damage.  An additional upside of the molecular tweezer is that it does not show any negative side effects to normal functioning brain cells.  Testing for this research has been done in zebrafish with posititve outcomes, in which studies are now being done in mice models with hopes of leading to human clinical trials.