Luisa Lopes, a researcher at the João Lobo de Antunes Institute of Molecular Medicine in Portugal, leads a team pursuing a safer, less invasive way to reduce the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease.
Deep brain stimulation, which involves using electrical currents to alter brain activity, has been shown to alleviate symptoms of the disease, but the technique has limitations. Optogenic stimulation, which involves the use of light instead of electricity to modify brain activity, also has limitations, since, after making neurons sensitive to light, they must be supplied with light. The most common technique involves implanting a light source directly into the brain. The procedure is invasive and is associated with complications such as bleeding and infection.
Luminopsins may be a less invasive method of delivering necessary light to the region of the brain that needs improvement. “If we are able to develop this method, we could modify and stimulate neurons simply by administering a drug instead of invasive implantation in the brain,” says Lopes. The research group has already completed optimization tests and development of a virus that will deliver the luminopsin gene to neurons and is ready to begin experiments in a mouse model that shows signs of Parkinson’s disease. “If we can apply our approach to humans, we will overcome the need for permanent implants,” Lopes continues. However, surgery would probably be required to deliver the virus containing the luminopsins. The brain injection would be performed through a small opening in the skull, a minimally invasive procedure with significantly lower risks compared to standard brain surgery.
