Fwd: PD fwd: Director of 'NIEHS' Announces $20 Million Initiative on Parkinso...

[Guest guest]

Director of National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences 'NIEHS' Announces $20 Million Initiative on Parkinson's Disease

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 26, 2002--

Bay Area Parkinson's Institute to Coordinate New Program That May Have Implications for Many Other Diseases

Olden, Ph.D., director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), announced today that $20 million in grants is being distributed to three research centers to study the relationship between exposure to environmental agents and the development of Parkinson's disease (PD).

J. Langston, M.D., founder and CEO of the Parkinson's Institute, said in a press conference that was Web cast today, "This could be the final chapter of our search for the cause of Parkinson's disease. Under the auspices and funding of NIEHS, three major research institutes will collaborate to find the environmental and genetic origins of Parkinson's. Working together we can accelerate the pace of research with a dream team of multi-disciplinary experts."

The Parkinson's Institute, which made some of the first findings of a link between environmental toxins and the disease, was selected to be the coordinating center for the unprecedented joint study. The other two research centers receiving NIEHS funding are the Emory Collaborative Center for PD Environmental Research at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, and the Center for Gene-Environment Studies in Parkinson's disease at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

NIEHS Director Olden said in announcing the new funding, "Our best chance for finding successful treatments for persons suffering with Parkinson's disease is to understand more about what triggers the disease. Even better, this research may lead to ways to prevent Parkinson's disease in the first place."

Dr. Olden said that the three centers will conduct their research independently but will also have the benefit of acting as a consortium, collaborating and taking advantage of each other's knowledge and expertise. He said, "We have some good clues about what environmental agents and genes may be important in Parkinson's disease. This new consortium should bring together the right mix of scientists so that these leads can be pursued quickly."

J. Fox, the actor who has raised public awareness of Parkinson's Disease and has created a foundation for the study of PD, said through a foundation spokesperson, "I applaud the NIEHS for fostering this innovative consortium of three leading research institutions. This approach recognizes that the issue of what causes Parkinson's disease may be complex and challenging, but it is a solvable mystery with the right focus and the right resources. And that may well be the surest road to a cure."

Recent biomedical research findings have implicated a variety of environmental toxins as playing a role in the cause of Parkinson's. Through the initiative announced today, the NIEHS is launching a model effort to unravel the environmental role in disease, and the gene-environment connections that promote susceptibility and disease onset.

The Parkinson's Institute will examine risks associated with pesticides and heavy metals, possible protective effects of tobacco and caffeine, the underlying mechanisms of dopamine cell death, and genetically determined susceptibility traits for Parkinson's disease.

The Emory Collaborative Center for PD Environmental Research at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, will develop new cellular and animal models to study gene-environment interactions in the development of Parkinson's disease and will focus on how pesticides interact with the proteins that package dopamine within nerves, and the cellular machinery that degrades abnormal proteins.

UCLA's Center for Gene-Environment Studies in Parkinson's Disease will study how variations in genes that regulate dopamine levels within neurons may play a role in the increased risk of Parkinson's disease associated with pesticides, using several model systems as well as human cells and DNA samples from two large and unique California studies of Parkinson's disease.

A progressive disorder characterized by muscular rigidity and tremors, slow movement and impaired balance and coordination, Parkinson's disease affects between 1 and 1.5 million people the U.S., with 50,000 new cases reported each year, NIH estimates.

Dr. Langston gained national and international recognition in 1982 for the discovery of the link between a "synthetic heroin" and parkinsonism in northern California. This substance, known as MPTP, is selectively toxic to the same nerve cells in the brain, which die in Parkinson's disease. The discovery of the biologic effects of this compound led to a renaissance in basic and clinical research in Parkinson's disease, specifically the role of environmental toxins in triggering the disease.

The Parkinson's Institute is an independent, not-for-profit organization conducting patient care and research activities in the neurological specialty area of movement disorders. Its mission is to find the cause and cure for these disorders, to provide the best available medical care to patients with movement disorders, to investigate better treatment and diagnostic tools, and to develop prevention strategies. For more information, please visit www.parkinsonsinstitute.org.

Dr. Langston's remarks were made during a press conference that was Web cast today. The Web cast was provided by AT & T Managed Services using its Intelligent Content Distribution Service (ICDS). AT & T ICDS provides benefits to customers in the two critical areas of streaming audio and video, and caching. By providing reserved capacity for highly trafficked Web events, streaming serves a customer's need for both live web casting and audio/video on demand. Caching helps customers with their Web site performance by delivering content more rapidly and efficiently, and by reducing the download times of large files.

CONTACT:

Parkinson's Institute

Chester, 408/542-5619

or

PRX Inc.

Steve Mangold, 408/205-1598

SOURCE: Parkinson's Institute

08/26/2002 13:01 EASTERN

[Guest guest]

,

Yep, sounds too familiar. $20 million for PD, skip the MSA and $1.1 BILLION

for AIDS.

Take care, Bill Werre

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