Biomarkers of neuroinflammation in Parkinson’s disease

Neurodegeneration and degenerative disease

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disease after Alzheimer’s. Although the pathogenesis of PD remains largely uncertain, a variety of mechanisms have been proposed – one of which implicates the role of inflammation in the progression of the disease. But how much do we currently know about the link between inflammation and PD? Are these inflammatory processes directly involved in the etiology of PD, or are they a consequence of the disease?
In this video, Dr Nicole Polinksi from the Michael J Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research (NY, USA) discusses the Foundation’s efforts to understand the role of neuroinflammation in PD and investigates the utility of neuroinflammatory readouts for biomarker development for PD. Dr Polinski is also joined by Dr Elnaz Atabakhsh from Abcam (MA, USA), who presents data utilizing the FirePlex® platform for multiplex quantitation of neuroinflammatory biomarkers in PD patient samples.

The timepoints for each presentation slide can be found below.

Elnaz Atabakhsh

  • 00:43 – Overview of the presentation

Nicole Polinksi

  • 01:12 – Brief overview of PD and what we currently understand, including therapeutics
  • 03:27 – “Parkinson’s is a complex puzzle”: progress requires funding and field-wide coordination
  • 06:04 – The Michael J Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s research
  • 06:56 – Research priorities
  • 08:00 – What do we know about the current link between inflammation and PD?
  • 09:15 – Importance of investigating inflammation in PD
  • 11:26 – The Michael J Fox Foundation strategy for investigating the role of inflammation in PD

Elnaz Atabakhsh

  • 15:50 – Introduction to the Abcam FirePlex platform and experimental design
  • 17:01 – Analyte quantitation with FirePlex particles
  • 19:57 – Integrated data analysis tools for FirePlex assays

Nicole Polinksi

  • 21:20 – Outstanding questions to cover before progress can be made on link between inflammation and PD
  • 24:50 – Previous work on PD neuroinflammation biomarkers

Elnaz Atabakhsh

  • 25:56 – Multi-omic discovery studies for evaluating neuroinflammatory biomarkers in PD (study design)
  • 31:02 – FirePlex miRNA assay workflow
  • 32:19 – miRNA profiling from challenging sample types
  • 33:58 – Combining Abcam’s in-house antibody and assay development capabilities
  • 35:27 – Custom assay development for neuroinflammation studies
  • 36:59 – Developing a 70-plex human cytokine discovery panel
  • 37:37 – Validation of human discovery panel across sample types
  • 39:09 – Immunoassays: serum summary data
  • 39:49 – Immunoassays: known serum targets of interest
  • 40:30 – Immunoassays: serum data
  • 43:18 – Immunoassays: CSF data
  • 44:50 – miRNA assays: serum summary data
  • 45:06 – miRNA assays: serum data

Nicole Polinksi

  • 46:40 – Recap on the landscape of neuroinflammation and PD

Elnaz Atabakhsh

  • 48:40 – A snapshot of biomarkers of neurodegeneration
  • 49:13 – Acknowledgements and concluding remarks
  • 50:00 – Questions from the audience

For more information on FirePlex, click here.

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