Berg and the Parkinson’s Institute and Clinical Centre has announced the next phase in their ongoing partnership, focused on identifying potential biomarkers that may lead to breakthroughs in the research, diagnosis, and treatment of Parkinson’s disease.
Using Berg’s Interrogative Biology platform to analyse multi-omic tissue samples supplied by the Parkinson’s Institute, this collaboration will identify the differences between healthy and diseased tissues in an effort to unravel the mysteries of Parkinson’s disease. Berg and the Parkinson’s Institute together are the first teams to approach biomarker discovery by looking at proteomics, metabolomics, and lipidomics, in addition to clinical data, simultaneously in human patients and controls from the same cohort, a press release reports.
According to the press release, the new clinical study launched at the Parkinson’s Institute and Clinical Centre will collect urine, blood, and other relevant tissue samples from people living with Parkinson’s disease. These materials will be used to validate biomarker candidates identified previously from the collaboration. Most importantly, this will represent a first in merging patients’ molecular and clinical information to develop profiles that will drive the development of biomarkers.
The expectation for this partnership is that it will help lead to a greater understanding of Parkinson’s disease and the development of new tools that can change its course.
“Through our collaboration with Berg, we hope to identify predictors for the disease and potential new drug targets. Armed with this information, we will be able to better diagnose and develop therapies that can treat and perhaps even halt the neurological damage caused by Parkinson’s,” says Birgitt Schuele, director of Gene Discovery and Stem Cell Modelling at the Parkinson’s Institute. “This collaboration is very exciting. Our discoveries have the potential to change the way we think about and approach Parkinson’s disease.”
