Charles Ducrot, University of Montreal
Graduate Student Award funded by Quebec Research Fund on Parkinson of Parkinson Quebec and Parkinson Society British Columbia of $30,000 over 2 years during the 2015 – 2017 research funding cycle
Project description:
Making connections is not only important for people’s emotional well-being – it is also critical for healthy brains. As researchers are now discovering, synapses, or the connections that convey signals and information from one neuron to another, may hold clues about what causes Parkinson’s disease.
At the University of Montreal, molecular biologist Charles Ducrot investigates the role synapses play in the vulnerability of dopamine-producing neurons in one part of the brain compared to another. Earlier research has established that the death of these dopamine-producing neurons is central to Parkinson’s disease. Now Ducrot, a PhD student, is testing the theory that the less vulnerable neurons in the brain’s ventral tegmental area (VTA) survive longer than those in the substantia nigra because the VTA neurons form more synapses that release the chemical messenger glutamate. These synapses may allow them to communicate better with target cells and receive survival signals.
Ducrot aims to discover whether the dopamine-producing brain cells in the substantia nigra die because they have fewer glutamate synapses, limiting the survival signals they receive. To test this, Ducrot and his colleagues have identified key proteins involved in forming synapses. Using cell cultures, they will alter the amount of these proteins to increase or decrease the number of synapses neurons form. The cells will then be exposed to toxins that produce Parkinson-like symptoms to see if neurons with fewer synapses are more vulnerable and die.
“We know that synaptic contacts are very important and in some way involved in survival,” Ducrot says. He believes that “if we increase the expression of these proteins, we increase the number of synapses, and we might decrease the vulnerability of neurons in Parkinson’s disease.”
If Ducrot can prove his theory, he hopes to lay the foundation for a new type of gene therapy. Since his first year in university, when he learned about dopaminergic neurons, Ducrot has been fascinated with discovering the causes of Parkinson’s disease. “It’s a common disease, and I want to know and understand more about it,” he says.