Dr Gerard O’Keeffe awarded> €0.5 million from SFI to research the developmental of new therapeutic approaches for Parkinson’s disease

9 Nov 2020

Dr Gerard O’Keeffe, Department of Anatomy and Neuroscience and APC Microbiome Ireland Research Centre has been awarded over 0.5 million in research funding from Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) on the developmental of new therapeutic approaches for Parkinson’s disease.

The research has been funded under the project category of SFI’s Frontiers for the Future programme and together with collaborators Professors Aideen Sullivan (UCC), Martin Levesque (Canada), Humberto Gutierrez (Mexico) and Claude Brodski (Israel), Dr O’Keeffe aims to develop viral vector based neurotrophic factor therapy to stop the neurodegeneration associated with Parkinson’s disease. 

The team proposes that there are naturally occurring proteins called neurotrophic factors that are present in the developing brain that are important for the development and survival of dopaminergic neurons that are lost in Parkinson’s disease. This project will explore the premise that these neurotrophic factors, and downstream regulators of their action, can be developed into disease modifying therapies for Parkinson’s, to stop the neurodegeneration that is central to the disease. 

https://www.sfi.ie/research-news/news/harris-sfi-frontiers/