Michael Bassik

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disease, characterized by progressive motor deficits such as tremor, muscle stiffness, and slowness of movement, and affects 6 million worldwide. Despite ongoing efforts to discover the mechanisms underlying this disease, PD remains an incurable disorder.

Myelin is the protective covering that surrounds nerve fibers to accelerate communication between different parts of the nervous system. Damage to myelin occurs in diseases such as multiple sclerosis, which compromises nerve signaling and impairs motor and cognitive function.

There is one characteristic of all neurodegenerative diseases: the accumulation and aggregation of abnormal proteins in the patient’s brain. These aggregations are thought to induce neuronal cell death and brain degeneration.