Published Monday
June 14, 2004
©2004 Omaha World-Herald. All rights reserved.
BY NICHOLE AKSAMIT
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER

Researchers at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha and at Columbia University Medical Center in New York have discovered a vaccine that prevents the death of brain cells in mice with Parkinson's disease.

Although not a cure, their discovery could improve treatments for human sufferers of Parkinson's, Lou Gehrig's, Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative diseases.

The researchers' findings were to appear as early as today in the online version of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and in the June 22 print edition.

The vaccine, developed and tested on mice in Omaha, is headed for clinical trials this fall in New York patients with Lou Gehrig's disease. Trials on Parkinson's patients are to begin early next year.

Dr. Howard Gendelman said the vaccine marks a milestone in neuroscience research and validates the interdisciplinary aim of the Center for Neurovirology and Neurodegenerative Disorders he directs at UNMC.

He credited graduate student Eric Benner for pioneering the work more than four years ago and carrying it through. Chris Destache of Creighton University's College of Pharmacy was another local co-author.

Dr. Harris Gelbard, a neurology professor at University of Rochester (N.Y.) Medical Center, has worked with Gendelman to study neurodegeneration in AIDS patients. Gelbard is familiar with the vaccine research.

"This is a milestone . . . that may have the potential to significantly improve quality of life and neurologic symptoms of people living with Parkinson's disease," Gelbard said.

The vaccine isn't like those that help ward off chickenpox or the flu. The new vaccine doesn't prevent mice from getting Parkinson's.

Instead, the vaccine induces the body's immune system to heal the brain.

"Brain injury caused by Parkinson's generates an inflammatory response that produces an even greater amount of cell injury," explained Gendelman. Essentially, the vaccine flips a switch in the immune response, prompting inflammation to subside and allowing healing to begin.

Gendelman said that, in the brains of mice with Parkinson's, the vaccine was shown to protect nerve cells, nerve connections and levels of dopamine, a neurotransmitter that helps the body with motor control and movement.

The vaccine will be tested first in Lou Gehrig's patients because that disease kills more quickly than Parkinson's and because other therapies for Parkinson's symptoms already exist, said Dr. Serge Przedborski. He is a professor at the Center for Neurobiology and Behavior at Columbia and a co-author of the study.

Przedborski and Gendelman anticipate that clinical trials will be approved and move forward quickly, in part because the protein in the vaccine already has been widely used to treat patients with multiple sclerosis.

Another reason? The therapy doesn't rely on more controversial methods - such as gene therapy or the use of fetal or stem cells - that hold promise but may take longer to advance from laboratory to hospital bedside.

"The idea that vaccination can use the elements in your own body to heal (the brain)," said Przedborski, "it is a very elegant concept."