October 19, 2018
Keio University School of Medicine
Eisai Co., Ltd.
A joint research group, led by researchers from the Department of Physiology at the Keio University School of Medicine, including Professor Hideyuki Okano and Associate Professor Jun Kohyama, and Eisai Co., Ltd. (CEO: Haruo Naito, hereinafter "Eisai"), has identified a compound expected to lead to a treatment for Parkinson's disease using dopaminergic neurons differentiated from iPS cells derived from patients with hereditary Parkinson's disease.
Aiming to develop a therapeutic drug for Parkinson's disease, the research group established a differentiation and induction system capable of stably supplying large quantities of dopaminergic neurons using neural progenitor cells induced from iPS cells that the group had established from patients with hereditary Parkinson's disease. Furthermore, they conducted a screening of an existing drug library using the vulnerability to stress observed in patient-derived dopaminergic neurons as an indicator and discovered a compound with an inhibitory effect on calcium channels. The research group conducted further detailed analysis and revealed that the expression of T-type calcium channels is elevated in patient-derived dopaminergic neurons and that inhibiting calcium influx through these T-type calcium channels can suppress stress-induced neuronal cell death.
These findings suggest that combining disease-specific iPS cells with an existing drug library makes it possible to both develop therapeutic drugs and elucidate disease pathology. It is hoped that using a similar approach will lead to the development of treatments for neurodegenerative diseases for which no conventional therapies have existed.
The results of this research were published in the online edition of "Stem Cell Reports" on October 18, 2018, at noon (US Eastern Time).
For the full press release, please see below.