The Atlantic Veterinary College (AVC) in Charlottetown is best known for its veterinary medicine program, but it’s also home to scientific research on human health. It’s in the planning stages now, but later in the summer research will officially begin at the AVC into Parkinson’s disease, thanks to a three-year grant from Parkinson Canada. “Being able to get an award like this and get funded to do this research is not easy,” says Dr. Jay Penney, who was awarded the $135,000 grant following an application. “I’m certainly quite happy. It’s allowing me to do this research, which will hopefully lead to helping people with Parkinsons.” Penney is an associate professor and Canada Research Chair at Biomedical Genetics at the AVC. The funding will be used to examine a newly-discovered mutation of the RAB32 gene, which is linked to Parkinson’s disease. “There’s been quite a few of those mutations identified over the years, but this particular one was just found last summer, so it’s quite newly-identified,” explains Penney. “Basically, this research is designed to try to understand what’s happening at the cellular level in the cells of the brain that is being caused by this mutation.” In his lab, Penney and his team will use human stem cell models to create brain cells that contain the mutation and study them. While the money won’t be in place until the end of the summer, Penney is currently in the planning stages of his work. He plans on looking at different cellular signaling pathways and processes and try to test whether those are altered. “The stem cell models that Jay is using is helpful because he’s using actual human cells from Parkinson’s patients,” says Ko Currie, the manager for research funding and partnerships manager with Parkinson Canada. “It’s really one of the closest model symptoms there are to studying Parkinson’s in human patients.” According to Parkinson Canada, more than 110,000 people in Canada are living with the neurodegenerative disorder. Currie says Canada “punches above its weight” when it comes to Parkinson’s research. “We have some of the most well-renowned doctors and research scientists in the world,” adds Currie. “So, we have a really strong research program for Parkinson’s disease.” Currie and Penney hope the work in Prince Edward Island will help the medical community understand more about the disease. “The whole project is aimed at trying to understand what this mutation does to the cells of the brain,” adds Penney. “It’s pretty early stages of basic science research, which is aimed to try to understand what’s happening. And then once we understand what’s happening, we have a lot better chance of figuring out how to fix it.” The funding for the study will be available beginning in August. “The better we understand Parkinson’s, the more targets we have, the better we’ll be set up for designing new therapies, new drugs, to ultimately stop Parkinson’s at the end of the day,” says Currie. For more P.E.I. news, visit our dedicated provincial page.
