Protein Helps Neurons Maintain Dopamine Production in Models of Parkinson's Disease

A team of neurodegenerative disease researchers has identified a protein that seems to help neurons in the brain maintain dopamine production.

Investigators at Iowa State University (Ames, USA) have been studying Prokineticin-2 (PK2), a recently discovered secreted protein that regulates important physiological functions including olfactory biogenesis and circadian rhythms in the central nervous system.

They reported in the October 5, 2016, online edition of the journal Nature Communications that although in mouse models PK2 expression was low in the nigral system of the brain, its receptors were constitutively expressed on nigrostriatal neurons, and that PK2 expression was highly induced in nigral dopaminergic neurons during early stages of degeneration in multiple mouse models of Parkinson’s disease (PD).

Functional studies demonstrated that PK2 promoted mitochondrial biogenesis and activated ERK (Extracellular signal-regulated kinase) and Akt (Protein kinase B) survival signaling pathways, thereby driving neuroprotection. More...