In the development of Parkinson’s disease (PD), the changes that will lead to neurodegeneration take place in the brain long before patients show any symptoms. But without a test that can detect these changes, it’s difficult to intervene early to more effectively slow disease progression.
To address this need, researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of Mass General Brigham, and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University have developed a molecular assay platform that they successfully applied to patient samples to detect and quantify single α-synuclein fibrils, the pathogenic aggregates of α-synuclein that are a hallmark of PD and other neurodegenerative disorders collectively known as α-synucleinopathies. Their results are published in PNAS.
