The Gut-Immune-Brain Axis in Parkinson disease

Overview

Project Summary

Parkinson’s disease (PD) constitutes a major public health problem due to an increasingly aged population as a consequence of generally improved medical care and demographic changes. However, current available treatments show modest symptomatic efficacy, leaving an unmet medical need for new, more effective therapies. Our hypothesis argues that chronic sub-clinical gut dysbiosis allows microbes or their metabolites to reach the brain through the vagus nerve triggering mitochondrial dysfunction, innate immune responses, inflammation and ultimately PD.

Main Goals

This interdisciplinary project aims to establish a microbial etiology and to revolutionize the preventive and therapeutic paradigms of sporadic PD through the identification of targets for new medicines with a combined effect of antibiotic, probiotic and anti-PD. These efforts involve translational approaches essential for the identification of new therapeutic targets that may be crucial for developing treatments to be offered to asymptomatic patients.

Project Details