c-Abl tagged posts

Clumps of the protein a-synuclein in a Parkinsonian brain. Credit: Donghoon Kim/Johns Hopkins Medicine

Researchers at Johns Hopkins say they have gleaned 2 important new clues in the fight against Parkinson’s disease: that blocking an enzyme called c-Abl prevents the disease in specially bred mice, and that a chemical tag on a second protein may signal the disorder’s presence and progression. Their work, suggests a promising target for drug research and a tool that could speed Parkinson’s disease research more broadly.

“There were indications that c-Abl activity leads to Parkinson’s disease, and our experiments show there is indeed a connection,” says Prof. Ted Dawson, M.D., Ph.D...