Parkinsons tagged posts

Scientists Learn how to Drug Wily Class of Disease-Causing Enzymes

An illustration of a GTPase thethered to a cell.
A GTPase (center) tethered to the outside of a cell (bottom), with several drugs in the distance. Credit: Inmywork Studio

Drugs for the K-Ras oncogene inspire an approach for targeting the GTPases, a family of enzymes whose dysfunction can lead to Parkinson’s and many other diseases.

UCSF scientists have discovered how to target a class of molecular switches called GTPases that are involved in a myriad of diseases from Parkinson’s to cancer and have long been thought to be “undruggable.”

Because of their slippery exteriors, the GTPases have remained largely out of reach of modern drug discovery, with the exception of the notorious cancer-causing GTPase called K-Ras.

On a hunch, the team tested a dozen drugs that target K-Ras against a handful of GTPases they had mutated to mak...

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Researchers Identify Brain Region involved in Control of Attention

Illustration of a coronal section of the brain showing the location of the basal ganglia and region names. Details in caption.
The basal ganglia are subcortical structures located at the base of the forebrain. They are comprised of the caudate and putamen, which both make up the striatum, as well as the globus pallidus, substantia nigra, and subthalamic nucleus. ‘Basal Ganglia’ by Casey Henley is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike (CC BY-NC-SA) 4.0 International License.

Researchers at the University of Iowa in a new study have linked a region in the brain to how humans redirect thoughts and attention when distracted. The connection is important because it offers insights into cognitive and behavioral side effects to a technique being used to treat patients with Parkinson’s disease.

The subthalamic nucleus is a pea-sized brain region involved in the motor-contro...

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