Launching today, Landmark is a groundbreaking three-year research program that aims to understand Parkinson’s disease in unprecedented detail. The project brings together Parkinson’s UK, Imperial College London, GSK, Novartis, Roche and UCB for the first time and is made possible by a £4 million founding grant from the Gatsby charity foundation.
Parkinson’s is the fastest growing neurological condition in the world, affecting around 153,000 people in Britain. The condition is caused by a lack of dopamine in the brain and there are more than 40 symptoms, from tremor and pain to anxiety.
Despite decades of research, treatments that can halt, reverse or prevent Parkinson’s disease remain out of reach. Although progress has been made in understanding the causes of the condition, a full picture of how and why people develop Parkinson’s still eludes experts.
The Landmark project will apply a technique called snRNAseq (single nucleusRibonucleic Acid sequencing) to quantify hundreds of tissue samples from the Parkinson’s UK Brain Bank, creating a map of gene expression in Parkinson’s across different cell types.
They will also analyze changes in:
- How gene expression is controlled by cells (epigenetics)
- How the changes in gene expression change which proteins are present in these cells (proteomics)
- How the changes in gene expression change which smaller molecules are present (metabolomics)
- How mutations in individual patients affect gene expression (genetics)
This powerful ‘multi-omic’ approach will provide unprecedented detail of what exactly is happening in the cells affected by the condition, allowing researchers to determine:
- Causes of Parkinson’s and Parkinson’s dementia
- Why some brain cells are more vulnerable to Parkinson’s than others
- Potential targets for developing new treatments
- New ways to measure disease progression (“biomarkers”), which are essential for clinical trials
- Which genes or mutations in our body increase our risk of developing Parkinson’s
With four major pharmaceutical companies on board and discussions underway with other potential partners, the Landmark team is uniquely positioned to rapidly advance this groundbreaking program. With each company contributing to the costs of the scientific work, they will gain early insight into any discoveries made that could impact the development of new therapies for Parkinson’s disease.
The new insights gained will also feed directly into Parkinson’s Virtual Biotech – the drug development arm of Parkinson’s UK, in partnership with the Parkinson’s Foundation – to enable the creation of new treatments for the community. Ultimately, however, the unique datasets will be made freely and openly available to the global research community.
The Landmark project is a highlight of my career. I founded the brain bank 22 years ago because I knew that techniques like single cell-type RNAseq gene expression would be possible and allow us to unlock the secrets that lie in the brains of people with Parkinson’s.
We are delighted to be bringing together charities, academia and pharmaceutical partners for this project for the first time. Landmark will significantly strengthen our ability to develop potential new treatments and a cure for the world’s fastest growing neurological disorder. It’s incredible to see it launched and know the potential it has to ultimately change the lives of people with Parkinson’s.”
Professor David Dexter, Research Director, Parkinson’s UK
Michael Johnson, professor of neurology and genomic medicine at Imperial College London and principal investigator of Landmark, said: “The Landmark project will produce state-of-the-art datasets that will allow scientists to understand the biological pathways by which Parkinson’s disease progresses. to fully understand. retention and progresses in the brain. But beyond that, our overarching goal is to find new potential drugs that can help us tackle the condition. By identifying the predictive biomarkers involved in Parkinson’s disease, we hope to accelerate the eventual journey of these drugs to patients. I am honored to be the academic lead on this bold partnership.”