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0:00
Hello.
My name is Michael Schwarzschild,
at Massachusetts General Hospital,
in Boston.
And I am pleased to present
our work, and that of others,
on purines in Parkinson's disease,
from epidemiology of caffeine
and urate to therapeutics.
As by way of disclosure, I have
no financial conflict of interest
or commercial relationship,
relevant to this presentation.
0:28
I will review for you some of
the work from our laboratory
on the Charlestown Navy Yard
campus of MassGeneral Hospital
and the MassGeneral Institute
for Neurodegenerative Disease.
But most of the work that
I'll be talking about
reflects attributions
across disciplines
and with many collaborators.
As you can see here, in addition
to the signature USS Constitution
from the Navy Yard, there is also
at an early stage, the Lenny Zakim
Bridge, that connects the
Charlestown Navy Yard to Boston
and MassGeneral Hospital proper,
that we've adopted over the years,
as a metaphor for the
translational work that we do.
1:11
Here you can see
some of the art work
that was kindly donated by
a local artist, Don Eyles,
depicting that metaphor during its
construction over a decade ago now,
and again reflecting our
translational goals in year focused
on purines as protectants
in Parkinson's disease.
And so, over the course
of the talk, broadly I'll
hope to illustrate how epidemiology
of reduced risks of Parkinson's
disease, in particular, are
valuable clues for developing novel
therapies to slow
progression of the disease.
And then I'll give an overview of
two examples that we've pursued,
one adenosine A2A
receptor antagonism,
with caffeine being a nonspecific
adenosine A2A antagonist,
having emerged as a realistic
multi-faceted potential new therapy
on the threshold of clinical
use in Parkinson's disease.
In the second half, I'll focus on
another example of how urate has
emerged really originally
from its biology in evolution,
to clues that have been
pursued in the laboratory,
and by epidemiologists, with the
convergence of those findings,
leading us to pursue
clinical application.
