The development of disease models that recapitulate the key pathological and clinical features of neurodegenerative diseases is one of the major barriers to developing desperately needed therapies to treat these devastating diseases.  The founders of ND Biosciences recently published in the prestigious journal Nature Reviews Neuroscience a systematic review and critical analysis of decades of research aimed at reverse engineering the human pathology of Parkinson’s disease in different models.

This work provides a new and comprehensive outlook on what is known about the process of protein aggregation and Lewy body formation in neurodegenerative diseases, together with a critical yet constructive analysis of existing cellular and animal model systems used in academia and industry. The article also lays out a framework for developing better disease models for translational research based on a deeper understanding of human-pathology and generation of multiple models that recapitulate different pathological and clinical features of the disease in humans. The authors argue that this approach is critical for the development of preclinical models that would advance discovery and validation of novel therapeutic strategies for Parkinson’s diseases, and maximize the chances of success of clinical trials.

The article was co-authored with Somanath Jagannath, a Ph.D. student in the Lashuel Laboratory at the EPFL. In one week, the article has been accessed ~1000 times and is leading in the 95th percentile of tracked articles of similar age in all journals.

About the article:

Fares, M.B., Jagannath, S. & Lashuel, H.A. Reverse engineering Lewy bodies: how far have we come and how far can we go?. Nat Rev Neurosci 22, 111–131 (2021).

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