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Researchers have found that excess levels of calcium in brain cells may lead to the formation of toxic clusters that are the hallmark of Parkinson’s disease.

A new super-resolution imaging technique allows researchers to track how surface changes in proteins are related to neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.

Researchers have identified how alpha-synuclein, the protein associated with Parkinson’s Disease, enables communication between neurons in the brain, offering important clues about what may be happening to patients when the protein malfunctions.

Specific mutations in the protein associated with Parkinson’s Disease, in which just one of its 140 building blocks is altered, can make a dramatic difference to processes which may lead to the condition’s onset, researchers have found.

Cambridge researchers have identified – and shown that it may be possible to control – the mechanism that leads to the rapid build-up of the disease-causing ‘plaques’ that are characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease.

Observation of the point at which proteins associated with Parkinson’s disease become toxic to brain cells could help identify how and why people develop the disease, and aid in the search for potential treatments.

How does the brain make connections, and how does it maintain them? Cambridge neuroscientists and mathematicians are using a variety of techniques to understand how the brain ‘wires up’, and what it might be able to tell us about degeneration in later life.

New funding will support fundamental research into the molecular processes underlying human disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, and enable new ways to combat them.

Excess quantities of a specific protein in the brain dramatically increase the chances of so-called “nucleation events” that could eventually result in Parkinson’s Disease, according to a new study.

Conditions which may accelerate the spread of Parkinson’s disease, and a potential means of enhancing naturally-occurring defences against neurodegenerative disorders, have been identified in two new studies.