Research

With the increase in the average life span of humans, age-associated neurodegenerative diseases are on a rapid rise. Parkinson’s disease (PD), a progressive debilitating movement disorder, is one of the most common age-associated neurodegenerative diseases. It happens due to progressive loss of dopamine-producing neurons in the substantia nigra region of the brain resulting in dopamine deficiency. Due to this, patients suffer from several motor symptoms such as tremor, rigidity, inability to initiate movements, impaired posture and balance, all of which result in decreased quality of life. Despite being known to modern medicine for the last 200 years, to date, there is no cure for PD.  This problem is compounded by a lack of complete understanding of disease pathogenesis and the inability of presently available animal models to accurately mimic key disease features.

Major research goals of the lab are 

a) Developing better mouse models of PD and utilizing them to decipher the disease mechanisms

b) Utilizing this understanding to develop biomarkers as well as therapeutics for this incurable disease

We focus on the role of alpha-synuclein aggregates in driving the disease process. In addition, we also try to find the reason behind the high susceptibility of substantia nigra neurons to degenerate during PD. 

While no approaches are out of bound to achieve these goals, core experimental tools used in the lab are stereotaxic surgery, behavioral analysis, histology and molecular biology.