Ezose Sciences has announced that it has received a grant from the Michael J Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research to apply Ezose’s GlycanMap technology to investigating the role of the sugars known as glycans in Parkinson’s disease.
Ezose’s GlycanMap technology enables automated analysis of glycans, which attach to proteins in the body and affect their biochemical function. The speed, scope, and quantitative power of this technology hold the potential for discovering novel glycan changes associated with altered protein function during the onset and progression of wide-ranging diseases, including Parkinson’s disease and other neurological disorders. Glycans could serve as novel biomarkers for guiding clinical management and drug development and provide insight into disease mechanism and novel drug targets, a press release reports.
The research funded by the foundation will be performed in Ezose’s laboratories, where the GlycanMap assay will be used to compare glycan profiles in brain-stem tissue from rat models of Parkinson’s disease and control rats over time and with respect to development of symptoms.
“The Michael J Fox Foundation has brought a tireless sense of urgency to advancing research into Parkinson’s disease,” says Ryuichi Kiyama, chairman and chief executive officer of Ezose. “We look forward to bringing that spirit as well as our technical capabilities to this novel research project.”
Mark Frasier, vice president of Research Programmes at The Michael J Fox Foundation, comments: “Two important steps toward the development of a disease-modifying therapy for Parkinson’s are greater understanding of the underlying pathology of the disease and validation of a reliable biomarker. Ezose’s glycan analysis offers a new approach to serve those goals and bring us closer to a Parkinson’s cure.”
