Parkinson ™s disease is a chronic, debilitating disease without a cure. There also is no preventive or restorative treatment available. In the United States, at least 500,000 people are believed to suffer from Parkinson's disease, and about 50,000 new cases are reported annually. The incidence is expected to increase as the average age of the population increases. The disorder appears to be slightly more common in men than women.

The vaccine approach utilizes a compound called Copaxone or Cop-1, a Food and Drug Administration-approved and well-tolerated drug. Cop-1 has been used effectively in patients with chronic neuroinflammatory disease such as relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis for more than a decade. Given the safety record for Cop-1 and that current treatments for Parkinson ™s disease remain palliative, such a vaccination strategy represents a promising therapeutic avenue that can readily be used in human clinical trials, said Drs. Gendelman and Przedborski.

The findings appear June 14 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. PNAS is among the world ™s most-cited multidisciplinary scientific journals. The report, titled Therapeutic immunization protects dopaminergic neurons in a mouse model of Parkinson ™s disease, appears online June 14. A print copy will be released June 22.

The work was supported in part, by the National Institutes of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, the U.S. Department of Defense, the Alan and Marcia Baer Foundation, the FVB Foundation, Inc., the Lowenstein Foundation, the Lillian Goldman Charitable Trust, the Parkinson ™s Disease Foundation and the MDA/Wings-Over-Wall Street.

UNMC is the only public health science center in the state. Its educational programs are responsible for training more health professionals practicing in Nebraska than any other institution. Through its commitment to education, research, patient care and outreach, UNMC has established itself as one of the country's leading centers in cancer, transplantation biology, bioterrorism preparedness, neurodegenerative diseases, cardiovascular diseases, genetics, biomedical technology and arthritis. UNMC ™s research funding from external sources now exceeds $65 million annually.

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