Identifying new biomarkers for early diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease

By identifying biomarkers in saliva and sebum, earlier diagnoses of Parkinson’s disease could be possible. This is the aim of the research within the project Exploiting Advanced Metabolomics and Lipid Profiling for Identification of Novel Non-invasive Biomarkers of Parkinson's Disease (BioPARK).

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder that suffers from diagnosis at late stages. Currently there is no efficient cure for PD. Thus, the discovery of non-invasive molecular biomarkers for PD at early stages, is of the urgent need.

We will target the search of non-invasive biomarkers in PD. We plan to use saliva and sebum as biofluids in advanced lipidomics analyses via NMR, LC-MS, FT-IR, Raman and GC-MS. We will also investigate “exosomes” from saliva samples. Exosomes are 30 to 150 nm nanovesicles that are formed inside the cells and stuck with unique nucleic acids, proteins and lipids. The emerging role of exosomal cargo in the pathogenesis of various diseases is well reported in the literature. We will gather more information about PD specific exosomal cargos for diagnosis the disease.

The proposed work is multidisciplinary in nature and will involve teaming up of Chemistry of Interfaces with Biomedical Engineering at Luleå University of Technology and researchers from Norrlands University Hospital (Umeå).

The specific aims of the project are:

1. Collection of saliva and sebum biofluid samples from PD patients and age matched healthy control cohorts and to isolate, characterize and validate exosomes from saliva.
2. Identification and validation of novel biomarker targets via metabolomics and lipid profiling from sebum, saliva samples as well as from isolated salivary exosomes in PD patients and age-matched healthy controls.
3. Assessment of complex multiomics data from various biofluids and exosomal samples of PD patients and healthy cohort for identification of novel biomarker and regulatory molecules/pathways mediating PD disease pathophysiology.

Project Team

Prof. Oleg N. Antzutkin, Professor in Chemistry of Interfaces, has extensive experience in solid-state NMR on Alzheimer’s amyloid-beta fibrils and neurotoxic oligomers.

Dr. Vaibhav Sharma is a postdoctoral researcher at Biomedical Engineering and has experience working on neurodegenerative diseases especially with biofluids based biomarker research.

Prof. Andrei Filippov, Professor in Chemistry of Interfaces has extensive experience in diffusion PFG-NMR on phospholipid membranes and their interaction with Alzheimer’s amyloid-beta.

External Partners

Dr. Sara af Bjerkén, Assistant professor and resident physician at Department of Integrative Medical Biology (IMB), Umeå University.

Assoc. Prof. Saroj Kumar, Department of Biophysics, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi, India and Visiting Researcher, Department of Health, Education and Technology, Luleå University of Technology. Read more at www.skumarlab.com External link, opens in new window.