October 20, 2003
Udall
Parkinson’s Center Established
at Feinberg
CHICAGO ---
Northwestern University has received $5.5 million award from
the National Institute for Neurological Diseases and
Stroke to establish a Morris K. Udall Center of Excellence for
Parkinson’s Disease Research.
The center,
which will focus on the pathophysiological mechanisms underlying
the motor and cognitive symptoms of Parkinson’s
disease, will be headed by D. James Surmeier, Nathan Smith Davis
Professor and chair of physiology at the Feinberg School of Medicine
at Northwestern.
Parkinson’s disease is a common neurodegenerative disorder
associated with aging. Symptoms include tremor, slowness of movement,
rigidity and postural instability. Although several brain regions
are affected in Parkinson’s disease, the most devastating
effects are in the basal ganglia, a group of brain structures linked
to control of movement and learning.
The central
goal of the Northwestern University Udall Center is to determine
how neural activity in basal ganglia circuits is
altered in Parkinson’s disease, with the goal of developing
new therapies to normalize this activity and alleviate the symptoms
of the disease.
The center’s research program employs state-of-the-art
electrophysiological, optical and computational approaches to understand
the pathophysiology of the basal ganglia regions most intimately
linked to the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease – the
globus pallidus and subthalamic nucleus. Current neurosurgical
treatment strategies for later stage Parkinson’s disease
patient target these regions, most commonly with deep brain stimulation.
The Northwestern University Udall Center has four project teams
and a molecular biology core facility. Surmeier directs one of
the project teams studying neurons found in the globus pallidus.
Mark Bevan, associate professor of physiology, heads a team studying
neurons found in the subthalamic nucleus.
Two other
projects involve researchers affiliated with other institutions.
Kitoshi Kita, University of Tennessee Health Sciences
Center, Memphis, heads a team whose goal is to understand how globus
pallidus and subthalamic neurons communicate with one another.
Last, Charles Wilson, University of Texas, San Antonio, directs
a project aimed at generating computational models of how these
complex brain circuits interact in Parkinson’s disease.
The Parkinson’s Disease Research Centers of Excellence
program was developed in honor of former Congressman Morris K.
Udall, who died in 1998 after a long battle with Parkinson’s
disease. Udall was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in
1979; however, he remained active as a member of Congress until
1991. In 1997, the Morris K. Udall Parkinson’s Disease Research
Act was signed into law, following which the NINDS created the
Centers of Excellence program.
Northwestern
is the 12th Udall Center in the United States. Other centers
are located at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston;
Columbia University, New York; University of Virginia, Charlottesville;
Mayo Clinic, Jacksonville, Fla.; University of Kentucky, Lexington;
Duke University, Durham, N.C.; University of California at Los
Angeles; Harvard Medical School and McLean Hospital, Belmont, Mass;
Emory University, Atlanta; Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston;
and The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore. |