For years, doctors have treated the Parkinson’s disease symptoms they could see: the shaking hands, the stumbling feet. <\/p>\n
But one of the likely causes of Parkinson’s is almost invisible. It’s buried deep within brain cells, where tiny engines called mitochondria slowly are shutting down. <\/p>\n
Now a team of researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University, and a biotech company in Charlottesville, say they think they’ve found a way to rev up those engines once again, potentially reversing the disease. <\/p>\n
Every cell in your brain is packed with mitochondria tiny engines that generate the energy cells need to function. But sometimes these brain cells do a curious thing. They turn off the signals to make mitochondria, depriving themselves of power. The tiny engines sputter and eventually cease to operate. <\/p>\n
Essentially, “the brain is divorcing its mitochondria,” says Dr. James P. Bennett Jr., director of the university’s Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorders Center. This, scientists recently discovered, appears to be a likely root cause of Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and other heretofore mysterious brain disorders. <\/p>\n
In 2004 one of Bennett’s graduate students, Shaharyar Khan, developed a way to deliver healthy mitochondrial DNA directly into mitochondria via a protein carrier. In mice and cultured human cells, this method of gene therapy has been shown to revive the mitochondria, restoring the cell to normal function. <\/p>\n
“It’s novel,” Bennett says. “No one else has it.” <\/p>\n
In January the researchers asked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for approval to begin human clinical trials. The approval process may take a while, but Bennett’s optimistic the team will be able to begin the trials this year. <\/p>\n
One of Bennett’s colleagues, Dr. Patricia A. Trimmer, is pursuing another promising therapy for Parkinson’s patients: near-infrared laser light. The laser beam painlessly penetrates a person’s skull, stimulating brain cells and rousing their sluggish mitochondria. <\/p>\n
Trimmer shows speeded-up video clips of two sets of mitochondria, which look like tiny white rods traversing a long, narrow nerve cell. In the first video, they creep like rush-hour traffic. In the second video, after being treated with the laser light, they’re zipping around like go-karts. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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\nThe Brain-Makers<\/a><\/p>\n
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