Catalan scientists discover potential treatment for Parkinson's disease

A study led by researchers Albert A. Antolin, from the Oncobell program of the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL) and ProCure of the Catalan Institute of Oncology (ICO), and Amadeu Llebaria, from the Institute of Advanced Chemistry of Catalonia (IQAC-CSIC), has shown that a component of the drug Rucaparib, used to treat different types of cancer such as prostate or ovarian cancer, has the potential to treat patients with Parkinson's disease.

Specifically, the study analyzed the molecule M324, the primary metabolite of Rucaparib, and its activity in the body using computational prediction. Through these analyses, the team has determined that the molecule reduces the accumulation of the protein a-synuclein in neurons derived from patients with Parkinson’s.

These results, therefore, demonstrate the therapeutic potential of the metabolite and its potential pharmacological application for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease.

Parkinson’s is a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by a movement disorder, in which neurons do not produce sufficient amounts of the neurotransmitter dopamine.

“Thanks to computational and experimental methods we have been able to comprehensively characterize, for the first time, the pharmacology of the M324 molecule,” said Antolin, who recently received a Junior Leader grant from the Catalan La Caixa Foundation.

The first author of the work, Huabin Hu, has made an exhaustive prediction of the differential activity of the original drug and its product, which translates into different spectra of the phosphorylation pattern of cellular proteins. Carme Serra, from the MCS group at IQAC-CSIC, synthesized the metabolite M324, which has allowed experimental verification of the computational prediction in biological and cellular assays.

The study is published in the journal Cell Chemical Biology.