Parkinson mice show functional and molecular changes in the gut long before motoric disease onset

Background: There is increasing evidence that Parkinson's disease (PD) might start in the gut, thus involving and compromising also the enteric nervous system (ENS). At the clinical onset of the disease the majority of dopaminergic neurons in the midbrain is already destroyed, so that the lack of early biomarkers for the disease represents a major challenge for developing timely treatment interventions. Here, we use a transgenic A30P-alpha-synuclein-overexpressing PD mouse model to identify appropriate candidate markers in the gut before hallmark symptoms begin to manifest. Methods: Based on a gait analysis and striatal dopamine levels, we defined 2-month-old A30P mice as pre-symptomatic (psA30P), since they are not showing any motoric impairments of the skeletal neuromuscular system and no reduced dopamine levels, but an intestinal alpha-synuclein pathology. Mice at this particular age were further used to analyze functional and molecular alterations in both, the gastrointestinal tract and the ENS, to identify early pathological changes. We examined the gastrointestinal motility, the molecular composition of the ENS, as well as the expression of regulating miRNAs. Moreover, we applied A30P-alpha-synuclein challenges in vitro to simulate PD in the ENS. Results: A retarded gut motility and early molecular dysregulations were found in the myenteric plexus of psA30P mice. We found that i.e. neurofilament light chain, vesicle-associated membrane protein 2 and calbindin 2, together with the miRNAs that regulate them, are significantly altered in the psA30P, thus representing potential biomarkers for early PD. Many of the dysregulated miRNAs found in the psA30P mice are reported to be changed in PD patients as well, either in blood, cerebrospinal fluid or brain tissue. Interestingly, the in vitro approaches delivered similar changes in the ENS cultures as seen in the transgenic animals, thus confirming the data from the mouse model. Conclusions: These findings provide an interesting and novel approach for the identification of appropriate biomarkers in men.

Exploring the pathological interaction between LRRK2 and alpha-synuclein

Alessandra Musso

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the most common age-related neurodegenerative movement disorder that affects 1-2% of the general population over the age of 65 and rising to 4-5% over 80 years of age. It is estimated that 6.3 million people worldwide have Parkinson’s disease and 1.2 million in the European Union (EU) alone. As the disease progresses, patients frequently develop a mask-like facial expression, festinating gait and cognitive impairment and the final clinical symptoms are muscle rigidity, bradykinesia, resting tremor and postural instability in addition to non-motor problems that result in a marked reduction in quality of life. The motor symptoms of PD arise from the progressive degeneration of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra pars compacta (SNpc) leading to a deficiency of the neurotransmitter dopamine (DA) in the striatum. While dopamine replacement therapy is initially effective in treating the motor symptoms of PD, there is no known cure or neuroprotective therapy for this debilitating disease. Although the pathology underlying the disease is well defined, it is still unclear why DAergic neurons degenerate and die. PD is generally considered as a sporadic disease of unknown etiology, however in the last two decades it has become clear that heritability plays an important role in the pathogenesis of PD. Of the different genes associated with familial disease, mutations in two genes encoding for α-synuclein and leucine-rich repeat kinase 2 (LRRK2) proteins cause autosomal dominant PD. One of the neuropathological hallmarks of idiopathic and some familial forms of PD are Lewy bodies, which are intracytoplasmic inclusions that are enriched with fibrillar α- synuclein protein. Notably, LRRK2 mutation carriers with PD predominantly develop Lewy body pathology suggesting that LRRK2 may lie upstream of α-synuclein aggregation. These observations and other in vivo studies have suggested a common pathogenic pathway with LRRK2 potentially regulating the aggregation and neuronal toxicity of α-synuclein. However, the relationship between LRRK2 and α-synuclein in the mammalian brain is presently unclear and requires further evaluation, especially within midbrain dopaminergic neurons that degenerate in PD. The aim of this thesis work was to delineate a potential pathogenic interplay between these two PD-related gene products in mediating neurodegeneration in vivo. Understanding how and where the functional pathways of LRRK2 and α-synuclein converge will provide important insight into the common mechanisms underlying neurodegeneration in PD.[...]

EPFL2014

An in vivo ultrahigh field 14.1 T (1) H-MRS study on 6-OHDA and α-synuclein-based rat models of Parkinson's disease: GABA as an early disease marker

Patrick Aebischer, Philippe Guillaume Coune, Mélanie Craveiro, Meret Gaugler, Rolf Gruetter, Bernard Schneider

The detection of Parkinson's disease (PD) in its preclinical stages prior to outright neurodegeneration is essential to the development of neuroprotective therapies and could reduce the number of misdiagnosed patients. However, early diagnosis is currently hampered by lack of reliable biomarkers. (1) H magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) offers a noninvasive measure of brain metabolite levels that allows the identification of such potential biomarkers. This study aimed at using MRS on an ultrahigh field 14.1 T magnet to explore the striatal metabolic changes occurring in two different rat models of the disease. Rats lesioned by the injection of 6-hydroxydopamine (6-OHDA) in the medial-forebrain bundle were used to model a complete nigrostriatal lesion while a genetic model based on the nigral injection of an adeno-associated viral (AAV) vector coding for the human α-synuclein was used to model a progressive neurodegeneration and dopaminergic neuron dysfunction, thereby replicating conditions closer to early pathological stages of PD. MRS measurements in the striatum of the 6-OHDA rats revealed significant decreases in glutamate and N-acetyl-aspartate levels and a significant increase in GABA level in the ipsilateral hemisphere compared with the contralateral one, while the αSyn overexpressing rats showed a significant increase in the GABA striatal level only. Therefore, we conclude that MRS measurements of striatal GABA levels could allow for the detection of early nigrostriatal defects prior to outright neurodegeneration and, as such, offers great potential as a sensitive biomarker of presymptomatic PD. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Wiley-Blackwell2013

Towards elucidating the structural and cellular determinants of a-synuclein seeding and toxicity

Somanath Jagannath

Although it has been nearly two and half decades since the discovery of alpha-synuclein (aSyn) as the major component of Lewy bodies (LBs), our understanding of the involvement of different aSyn species, their seeding, spreading and toxicity in Parkinson's disease (PD) is limited. One of the major causes underlying this knowledge gap is the unavailability of adequate tools, techniques, and model systems to capture, monitor, and evaluate the role of different aSyn species in the disease process. In addition, our understanding of cell-type specific contributions to disease pathogenesis is limited. In this thesis, we systematically address the current knowledge gaps and elucidate the structural and cellular determinants of aSyn seeding and toxicity using cellular and animal model systems of PD. In the first chapter of this thesis, we describe an antibody characterization and validation pipeline to assess the specificity of antibodies to well-characterized preparations of various aSyn species, including monomers, fibrils, and different type of oligomers. Using an array of techniques, we demonstrate that that: i) none of the antibodies tested are specific for one particular type of aSyn species, including monomers, oligomers or fibrils; ii) all antibodies that were reported to be oligomer-specific also recognized fibrillar aSyn; and iii) a few antibodies (e.g., the antibody clone 26F1, 5G4) showed high specificity for oligomers and fibrils but did not bind to monomers. These findings suggest that most aSyn aggregate-specific antibodies cannot be used to differentiate between oligomers and fibrils, thus highlighting the importance of exercising caution when interpreting results obtained using these antibodies. In the second chapter of this thesis, we systematically addressed the current knowledge gaps on the role of aSyn oligomers in the initiation, seeding and pathology spreading. Towards this goal, we used different biophysical approaches to investigate aSyn seeding in vitro and in neurons and animal models of aSyn seeding and pathology spreading. we observed that oligomeric forms do not form in the PFF-based neuronal seeding model and we report that different types of oligomers do not seed pathology in vitro and primary hippocampal neurons, and their presence slows rather than accelerates aSyn fibrillization. Altogether, our work points to fibrils as the most seeding competent species and suggests that they are the critical mediators of pathology spreading in PD and other synucleinopathies.In the third chapter of this thesis, we used single-nuclei RNA-sequencing to investigate transcriptional changes in different cell types of the amygdala brain region, which is highly susceptible to developing pS129 positive aggregates in the PD brains. We identified that most of the top 100 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) are of neuronal rather than non-neuronal cell types. In addition, we report that the gene expression profile of a handful of PD risk genes such as Sncaip, Park7, Maob, Hspa8, Scl2a3 and Hsf3 and some pathways that have been associated with PD are differentially altered in specific cell types. Our study highlights the involvement of unique gene expression changes and their associated pathways in different cell types in driving the disease process at an early stage in a PFF-based mouse model of PD.