These data suggest that altered chaperone activity may be involved in the progression of Parkinson's disease

Dr Pavan Auluck, University of Pennsylvania

The latest research, at the University of Pennsylvania at Philadelphia, looked at what happened in fruit flies when alpha-synuclein was present, with or without the "chaperone".

Flies with alpha-synuclein heavily present lost approximately half their dopamine-producing neurons in certain brain areas by the time they reached 20 days old.

When they were genetically modified to remove the "chaperone" protein, this marked neuronal degeneration took just one day to happen.

'Neuronal arsenal'

However, when they genetically altered the flies so that the "chaperone" protein was present in greater quantities, the reverse happened.

The modified flies had just as many of these brain cells at 20 days as on their first day.

This, say the researchers, suggest that treatments which look to boost the quantity of "chaperone" proteins may be worth looking at for humans.

Dr Pavan Auluck, lead author of the project, said: "These data suggest that altered chaperone activity may be involved in the progression of Parkinson's disease, and that chaperones such as Hsp-70 may be a critical part of the neuronal arsenal that fights neurodegenerative disease."

Dr Nancy Bonini, another of the researchers, said: "If Hsp-70's role of protecting against alpha-synuclein toxicity is confirmed in mammals, an important step would be to pursue drugs that upregulate the stress response that produces these chaperones, and determine whether they will protect neurons."

The study was published in the journal Science.