I would be interested in meeting scientists who are interested in collecting and sharing intestinal biopsies from cohorts of patients , healthy controls, and podromal to analyze intestinal epithelium and immune cells over time. I feel this could be als a gap in the PPMI but I am not with whom I should discuss this.
This collaboratve effort will help to translate some animal data that point to unique involvement of the gut metabolism on the brain and TH neurons.
Hi @dicara, thanks for your post! I had a couple questions:
Are there data-sharing considerations that potential collaborators should be aware of if/when sharing intestinal biopsies?
Which type of animal data could this collaborative effort help translate, and is it already collected?
Tagging some community members with experience and/or interest in microbiome data and molecular cellular biology. Whether you have some insight for @dicara or are interested in collaborating, let us know!
The potential collaborator can know as much as they are interested to know. We have Drosophila and mouse data pointing to an overexpression of neuropeptides from the intestinal epithelium that seem to affect the brain by leading to neuroinflammation and TH neurons 's death. We also know that the induction of these peptides can be triggered by alteration in diet and lipid metabolism in the gut.
Analyzing the data of PPMI I can see at least one of the peptide that we genetcally proved to lead to neuroinflmmation increasing in the male cohort of 50-60 years in age .
We would like to test the connection between the specific lipid metabolic pathway-neuropeptide and disease state in human using a cohort that has healthy control, potentially podromal and PD (mainly interested in the sporadic group).
We are open to give authorships, supply data or working together with collaborators. We only care to advance the field and we require at this point to look at the intestinal biopsises but mainly live ones that can be cultures ad organoids.