The names of the awardees of the 2020 edition of the Ciutat de Barcelona Awards. Regarding the category of Life Sciences, the prize was awarded to a project led by Antonella Consiglio, ICREA researcher from the Faculty of Medicine and Life Sciences, the Institute of Biomedicine of the UB (IBUB) and the Bellvitge Institute for Biomedical Research (IDIBELL), and Ángel Raya, member of the Center of Regenerative Medicine in Barcelona (CMR[B]/IDIBELL).
The awarded research study, “Patient-specific IPSC-derived astrocytes contribute to non-cell autonomous neurodegeneration in Parkinson’s disease”, was published in January 2019 in the journal Stem Cell Reports. One of the main conclusions of the study is that the defective variants of the astrocytes –a type of human glial cells- are related to the accumulation of a toxic protein, typical from Parkinson’s disease.
The analysed astrocytes, from patients with Parkinson’s disease with a genetic mutation, created a larger accumulation of the toxin α-synuclein compared to healthy individuals’ samples. This new study suggests an important role of glial cells in Parkinson’s disease and proposes potential new therapeutic targets.
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