Charles Wilson

UTSA collaborates on Parkinson's disease research

(Nov. 12, 2003)--UTSA is partnering with Northwestern University and the University of Tennessee Health Sciences Center-Memphis to form one of 12 Morris K. Udall Centers of Excellence for Parkinson's Disease Research. The center will be located in Evanston, Ill.

The centers are intended as a venue for state-of-the-art, multidisciplinary research into the causes and treatments of Parkinson's disease and related neurodegenerative disorders.

Funded by a $5 million, 5-year grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), the new center will study how Parkinson's disease affects parts of the brain that control movement and learning. Institutions conducting Parkinson's research at the Udall centers include the University of California at Los Angeles, Johns Hopkins University, Harvard Medical School and Duke University.

Parkinson's disease is a progressive neurological disorder that results from degeneration of neurons in a region of the brain that controls movement. This degeneration creates a shortage of the brain-signaling chemical neurotransmitter known as dopamine, causing the movement impairments that characterize the disease. Symptoms include trembling in limbs and face, stiffness of limbs or trunk, slowness of movement and impaired balance and coordination.

Charles Wilson, UTSA professor of biology, is heading one of the four project teams at the new center. His project proposes to use mathematical models and computer simulations to bridge the gap between biophysical information and cellular properties that play a key role in Parkinson's related diseases.

"We would like to see the differences in normal and abnormal activity so we could try to target therapies and develop pharmaceutics to assist these patients," said Wilson.

In the United States, at least 500,000 people suffer from Parkinson's disease and 50,000 new cases are reported annually. Parkinson's usually affects people over age 50 and strikes men and women in equal numbers.

The Morris K. Udall Centers of Excellence for Parkinson's Disease Research program was developed in honor of Congressman Morris K. Udall, who died in 1998 after a long battle with the disease.

--Kris Rodriguez