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Three-year German-American project studies biology of LRRK2
FRANKFURT. About ten percent of Parkinson's cases can be ascribed to mutations in the LRRK2 gene. Five research teams from the University of California in San Diego, Goethe University Frankfurt and the University of Konstanz want to explain in the next few years how mutations in the LRRK2 gene trigger Parkinson's disease and what possible targets there are for drugs. The US-American initiative “Aligning Science Across Parkinson's" has made the equivalent of € 6.1 million available for this project.
In the early 2000s, it was discovered that
in many Parkinson's patients a certain enzyme called LRRK2 mutates and
evidently plays a significant role in five to ten percent of hereditary Morbus
Parkinson and between one and five percent of the spontaneous form. LRRK2 is an
enzyme that attaches phosphate groups to other proteins in the human cell and
is far more active than normal in the brain cells of Parkinson's patients,
leading it to block transport processes in the cell. Many inhibitors against
the LRRK2 enzyme have already been tested in the past, but they are not
sufficiently effective or their side-effects are too severe.
The five teams from USA and Germany want
now to elucidate in detail the enzyme's structure and how it works in the cell
and thus create a basis for the targeted production of inhibitors. A first
three-dimensional structure of the LRRK2 protein was recently published by the
research team in the journal Nature. The initiative “Aligning Science
Across Parkinson's", which is backed by The Michael J. Fox Foundation for
Parkinson's Research, is supporting the project financially.
Co-Project Manager Stefan Knapp, Professor
for Pharmaceutical Chemistry at Goethe University, explains: “By comparing
LRRK2 mutations in Parkinson's patients with normal LRRK2, we want to find out
which tasks LRRK2 assumes in the cell, how the enzyme moves three-dimensionally,
and how the mutated LRRK2 contributes to nerve cells dying off. While the
expertise of our colleagues in the USA lies in various imaging methods, here in
Frankfurt we'll develop chemical probes to localize and study LRRK2 in cells
and we will produce recombinant LRRK2 variants that will help us to understand
their three-dimensional structure."
Co-Project Manager Florian Stengel, Professor
for Cellular Proteostasis at the University of Konstanz, says: “In the
framework of this project, we here in Konstanz want to identify the cellular
interaction partners of LRRK2. In this way, we'll be able to complete our
picture of its cellular role and thus make it possible to develop a drug
against LRRK2 mutated Morbus Parkinson."
Article
on the first three-dimensional structure of the LKKR2 protein: C K Deniston, J Salogiannis, S Mathea, D M
Snead, I Lahiri, M Matyszewski, O Donosa, R Watanabe, J Böhning, A K Shiau, S
Knapp, E Villa, S L Reck-Peterson, A E Leschziner. Structure of LRRK2 in
Parkinson's disease and model for microtubule interaction. Nature. 2020 Aug 19 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32814344/
Pictures
to download: www.uni-frankfurt.de/92946466
Caption:
Professor Stefan Knapp, Institute of
Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Goethe University, Frankfurt (Foto: Uwe Dettmar)
Further
information:
Professor Stefan Knapp
Institute of Pharmaceutical Chemistry
Goethe University Frankfurt
Phone: +49 69 798-29871
knapp@pharmchem.uni-frankfurt.de
Professor
Florian Stengel
Department
of Biology / Laboratory of Cellular Proteostasis and Mass Spectrometry
University of Konstanz
Phone:
+49 7531 88-5172
florian.stengel@uni-konstanz.de
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