3 October 2018
Analysis published in Drug Discovery Today reveals the gap between animal models of Parkinson’s disease (PD) and our understanding of the neurodegenerative processes underlying the disease, and calls for the implementation of modern, human biology-based technologies to better understand pathological processes and improve treatment outcome.
While current approaches to drug discovery for PD have led to the development of tools for the motor symptoms that accompany neurodegeneration, they have fallen short of identifying preventative or curative therapies. The authors of “Parkinson’s disease research: adopting a more human perspective to accelerate advances” describe how this failure derives from the fact that animal disease models can never fully replicate the healthy or diseased human brain. Dr. Catherine Willett and Dr. Lindsay Marshall advocate new approaches with greater focus on recent advances in systems biology computer science and engineering using information from human cells, tissues, and subjects. [Read more…]