Brains in the Balance: New $11.5M Grant Fuels U-M Parkinson's Disease Research Center to Aid Patients

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Newswise ANN ARBOR, Mich. Deep in the brains of the million Americans with Parkinsons disease, changes to their brain cells put them at high risk of dangerous falls -- a problem that resists even the most modern treatments.

Now, University of Michigan scientists and doctors have launched a five-year, $11.5 million effort to better understand the cause of these problems, and find new options based in the latest brain science.

With the new grant from the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke, part of the National Institutes of Health, U-M becomes home to one of only nine Morris K. Udall Centers of Excellence in Parkinsons Disease Research in the country. Named for a noted member of Congress who battled the disease, the Udall Centers bring together researchers from many fields to tackle big questions in Parkinsons, to educate the next generation of Parkinsons researchers, and to serve as a vital resource for patients with the disease.

The U-M investigators will focus on a brain chemical system that is rapidly emerging as a key player in the diseases effect on walking and balance in large part due to advances made at U-M. Called the cholinergic system, it helps us focus our attention on tasks such as walking, and may be the next key target for Parkinsons treatments.

The U-M Udall Center team includes researchers in many units of the university. They include Medical School doctors who treat Parkinsons patients at the U-M Health System and the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System, and study the disease in their labs, as well as a neuroscientist in the College of Literature, Science & the Arts, and biostatisticians from the schools of Nursing and Public Health.

Understanding the role of the cholinergic system is a key unexplored frontier in Parkinsons disease, and will allow us to go beyond the limits of current practice, so we can create better therapies to suppress the terrible symptoms of the disease that affect balance, walking and overall independence, says William Dauer, M.D., who will be the centers director. Dauer directs the UMHS Movement Disorders program and is the Elinor Levine Professor of Neurology, and an associate professor of Cell and Molecular Biology, in the U-M Medical School.

Targeting the double whammy of Parkinsons brain cell loss

Most Parkinsons disease research and treatment focuses on the brains dopamine system, which normally helps control movement. This control breaks down in Parkinsons patients, as more and more dopamine-producing brain cells called neurons are lost.

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Brains in the Balance: New $11.5M Grant Fuels U-M Parkinson's Disease Research Center to Aid Patients