Prions in Parkinson’s Disease - a new perspective?

Ideas and Inspiration
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Hello everyone:

This is my first post but I’m hoping to bring some valuable topic.

I have recently stumbled upon this perspective (“The prion principle and Alzheimer’s disease”) by Walker and Jucker and thought I’d share it with you and also ask for your comments and insights.

The perspective focuses primarily on Alzheimer’s disease but they do offer a hint about the potential role of prions in Parkinson’s disease development. This brought back the not-so-new but still an intriguing question: Could Parkinson’s disease (PD) have prion-like characteristics similar to Alzheimer’s?

Recent studies suggest that prion-like propagation of misfolded proteins, specifically α-synuclein, may play a role in PD development, akin to how amyloid-β functions in Alzheimer’s.

We’ve seen significant breakthroughs in understanding Alzheimer’s origins through this lens, but is Parkinson’s on a similar trajectory? If Parkinson’s disease does follow a prion-like mechanism, what does this imply for early detection and therapeutic interventions? Do you think that targeting the misfolding and spread of α-synuclein could help in the way we treat Parkinson’s?

I wonder what you think about it and whether you know about more pieces of evidence that supports or challenges the idea of prion-like mechanisms in PD?

Cheers!

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Hi @marekpiatek , really interesting topic, thanks for sharing! The potential similarities between Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s as perhaps different manifestations of a broader neurodegenerative disease class is very intriguing, especially if learnings from one domain can be transferred to another.

I’m curious if community members with proteomics experience (@okarayel , @jonahkeller , @tnanasi , @jaeyoon.chung , @blehallier ) have any comments or insights on the potential of pursuing a prion-like mechanism in Parkinson’s research?