Parkinson’s Foundation Backs MDI Bio Lab’s Brain Cell Regeneration Project

Press Release

Parkinson's Foundation Backs MDI Bio Lab's Brain Cell Regeneration Project

$200,000 Impact Award supports effort to map how a Mexican salamander naturally regrows lost neurons - work that could open new paths toward treating Parkinson's disease.

The MDI Biological Laboratory (MDI Bio Lab) has received a $200,000 Impact Award from the Parkinson's Foundation to investigate how the axolotl naturally regrows dopaminergic neurons in the brain - the same cells whose progressive loss drives the motor-control challenges that accompany Parkinson's disease.

Native to Mexico, the axolotl is renowned for its regenerative abilities - it can regrow entire limbs, spinal cord and heart tissue and, unlike humans and other mammals, complex neural tissue throughout its life.

The Parkinson's Foundation Impact Award program is designed to fund researchers who are pursuing innovative projects that bring new light to the biology of Parkinson's disease or test novel therapeutic ideas. The MDI Bio Lab project was one of 14 funded from a pool of more than 250 applications.

Assistant Professor Prayag Murawala, Ph.D., and a doctoral candidate in his research group, Damián García-García, have developed preliminary data showing for the first time that adult axolotls can recover and regenerate lost dopaminergic neurons.

The team hypothesizes that this cellular regrowth restores not just the neurons themselves, but the broader neural circuits they belong to; testing that hypothesis is a central goal of the newly funded project. The award will fund a two-year effort to determine exactly how this regeneration happens, why mammals can't do it too and how the salamander's biological responses to cell loss might be harnessed for human health.

"Dr. Murawala and his team are drawing a detailed map of nature's hidden paths for regeneration, in an animal that's not so far from us on the evolutionary tree," said MDI Bio Lab President Hermann Haller, M.D. "We are grateful for the Foundation's support, which will help to unlock new ways to address Parkinson's and other degenerative diseases."

"We are pleased to support this innovative and ambitious proposal," says Parkinson's Foundation Chief Scientific Officer James Beck, Ph.D. "By leveraging the unique traits of the axolotl combined with advanced molecular biology techniques, this work has the potential to make meaningful advances in pursuit of a major treatment goal for Parkinson's disease - the regeneration of lost dopamine neurons."

Mapping regeneration at the molecular, cellular, and circuit level

Titled "Harnessing neurogenesis in the adult axolotl brain for regenerative therapies in Parkinson's disease," the project combines several complementary approaches:

• Identifying the specific genes, proteins and progenitor cells whose activity drives new dopaminergic neuron formation, and whether these same mechanisms are also at work in humans and other mammals.
• Using MDI Bio Lab's custom-built 3D light-sheet microscope - an advanced imaging technology that captures detailed pictures of large volumes of tissue - to map the anatomical structure and long-range connections of regenerated neural circuits across the entire axolotl brain.
• Using video-tracking systems to monitor animals that have regenerated lost brain cells, measuring their behavioral responses to stimuli to confirm that the new neurons don't just appear, but actually restore motor function.

"Over the years, MDI Bio Lab has built genetic maps and tools, imaging technology, single-cell analytics and big data systems that have allowed us to study axolotl regeneration in unprecedented detail," Murawala says. "Now we will bring all of that together and point it specifically at how the brain replaces these dopamine-producing cells."

More than 90,000 new cases of Parkinson's disease are diagnosed in the U.S. each year, while an estimated 1.1 million Americans are currently living with Parkinson's disease (PD), making it the second most common neurodegenerative condition in the country, after Alzheimer's disease.

Murawala and García-García's work on the disorder is receiving further significant support thanks to a generous philanthropic donation of $50,000 by the Bourne family.

Why the axolotl

Axolotls are among the few vertebrates able to regenerate a wide array of tissues. This project's preliminary findings suggest axolotls can add dopaminergic neurons to that list.

Because the loss of dopaminergic neurons in the midbrain is the central driver of Parkinson's disease, understanding how axolotls naturally reverse that loss could point toward new therapies that address the disease's root cause, rather than just managing its symptoms, as current treatments do.

"There's an organism suited to answer almost any biological question," said García-García, who began studying axolotl brain regeneration as a student in Mexico before joining Murawala's lab. "We think the axolotl can show us how to activate latent neurons already inside the brain and guide them to become exactly what's lost in degenerative diseases such as Parkinson's."

About the MDI Biological Laboratory

At the MDI Biological Laboratory, we aim to improve human health by discovering novel mechanisms of tissue repair, aging and regeneration, translating our discoveries for the benefit of medicine and society and developing the next generation of scientific leaders.