International Consortium led by Professor Matthias Mann has identified and validated a Cellular Role of Parkinson’s Disease Target, LRRK2 Kinase

Text from the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry press release of 28 January 2016: An international public-private consortium of researchers led by The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research has had its work published in eLife. A team comprising investigators from the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, the University of Dundee, GlaxoSmithKline and MSD, known as Merck & Co., Inc., in the United States and Canada, has discovered that the LRRK2 kinase regulates cellular trafficking by deactivating Rab proteins. This finding illuminates a novel route for therapeutic development and may accelerate testing of LRRK2 inhibitors as a disease-modifying therapy for Parkinson’s, the second most common neurodegenerative disease.

Professor Matthias Mann is the leader of the Department of Proteomics and Signal Transduction at the Max-Planck Institute of Biochemistry and Program Director of the Proteomics Program/group leader of the Clinical Proteomics group at Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Research at the University of Copenhagen.

Prof. Matthias Mann conducted this research in collaboration with researchers from his research group at the Max-Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Munich, Germany.

Matthias Mann quote: this new discovery illustrates how powerful the technology of ‘clinical proteomics’ has now become. In the new Clinical Proteomics group at Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Research at the University of Copenhagen, we intend to use this technology on a large scale to investigate metabolic diseases such as diabetes.

Link to press release from the Max Planck Institute 

Link to the paper at eLife: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.12813