Parkinson¿s Vaccine Being Tested in Houston

HOUSTON - A local lab is evaluating a promising therapy for a devastating illness: Parkinson’s disease.

For almost two centuries, Parkinson’s has proven resistant to the best efforts of science.

But researchers at UTHealth have developed a vaccine designed to stop the disease in its tracks.

For Joe Davidson, an avid piano player in his 60’s, Parkinson’s disease might as well be erasing notes from the page.

“Parkinson’s has made it so that I can't play everything that I used to be able to play,” explains Davidson. “My fingers just don't move the way I want them, as fast as I want them to.”

After his diagnosis in 2002, Davidson retired early from the University of Houston, where he had been a teacher and administrator.

He is among about 19,000 people in the Houston area who are coping with Parkinson’s and its symptoms: tremors, stiffness and slurred speech.

There is no proven cause and no known cure.

“It's a horrible disease,” says Chuantao Jiang, MD, PhD, a neuroscientist at UTHealth. “And the disease progresses year by year and the symptoms will become worse and worse.”

But Dr. Jiang is among a small group of researchers who believe they’re closing in on a vaccine.

It’s a new compound that prompts the immune system to generate antibodies which attack the buildup of alpha-synuclein, a protein known to accumulate in the brains of people with Parkinson’s.

“Hopefully, by reducing the aggregation of this protein, we can slow down the progression of Parkinson's disease,” says UTHealth chemist Rowen Chang, PhD, the lead researcher on the project.

The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research is providing some of the funding for this research, in hopes this drug will succeed where so many others have failed.

“If it halts it,” explains Joe Davidson, “I mean, I get my life back that I once enjoyed, where I could play anything on the piano that I wanted to.”

That would be music to Davidson’s ears, and many others’ as well.

Right now, the Parkinson’s vaccine is being tested on mice.

But if the results hold, human clinical trials could begin within a year or two.