A University of Wisconsin-Madison research team has unlocked clues on how to possibly prevent Parkinson’s disease — by boosting a gene that prevents a toxic chemical from destroying neurons in a region of the brain that regulates movement.
UW-Madison pharmacy professor Jeffrey Johnson and colleagues Pei-Chun Chen, Marcelo Vargas and Delinda Johnson studied what effect boosting the Nrf-2 protein would have in blocking MPTP, a chemical that kills neurons in the substantia nigra region of the brain.