Spotlight on Research

Roy N. Alcalay, M.D.
"Why do some people who carry genetic mutations associated with Parkinson’s disease (PD) never develop PD while others do?" asks Roy N. Alcalay, M.D., a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Parkinson’s Disease and Other Movement Disorders...
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Dominant-positive HSF1 decreases alpha-synuclein level and alpha-synuclein-induced toxicity.
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Mol Biol Rep 2009 Jul;
Authors: Xu Liangliang, Hou Yonghui, E Shunmei, Gong Shoufang, Zhou Wei, Zou Jiangying
School of Life Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, 230027, Hefei, China.
Alpha-synuclein aggregation and cytotoxicity are widely considered to play a critical role in the process of Parkinson's disease. Heat shock proteins are a large family of cellular protective molecules in most kinds of cells. In this study, we examined the impact of dominant-positive heat shock transcription factor 1 (HSF1) on alpha-synuclein over-expression cellular model of Parkinson's disease. We found that over-expression of alpha-synuclein could form alpha-synuclein immunopositive inclusions and result in cell death; dominant-positive HSF1 dramatically increased the expression of HSP70 in SH-SY5Y cells, and significantly decreased the level and cytotoxicity of alpha-synuclein. Taken together, these data indicate that dominant-positive HSF1 plays an important role in suppressing alpha-synuclein aggregation and toxicity in SH-SY5Y cells. Parkinson's disease which is marked by alpha-synuclein aggregation may be treated by increasing a set of endogenous heat shock proteins.
PMID: 19609719 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]










