PDI announces its first "Parkinson's Discovery Travel Award"

A major component of our mission is to grow translational research.  By finding the common ground of results from preclinical and clinical studies, our goal is to truly understand how the areas of brain affected by Parkinson's disease may be treated to optimize daily life for those affected by PD.   Ms. Janiece Vancil, a DO/PhD student at University of North Texas Health-Fort Worth, presented highly novel results at the recent World Parkinson Congress in Phoenix and is the recipient of the first Parkinson's Discovery Travel Award in the amount of $1500.  Her work covered the hotly-studied, and controversial, area of alpha-synuclein and how it may change into oligomerized forms in the rat brain.  As there are a number of rodent models in PD research, her work shed light on potential vulnerability patterns in alpha-synuclein oligomerization in the intact nigrostriatal pathway.  As the nigrostriatal pathway is the dopamine pathway vulnerable in PD, her work opens the door to insight as to how dopamine release may be regulated between the striatum and substantia nigra, and why the striatum may be more vulnerable early on during disease progression.   Ms. Vancil is a graduate of UT-Dallas and is working on her doctoral dissertation in the labs of Drs. Michael Salvatore and Vicki Nejtek-Salvatore.