Michael Desjardins
Credit: Amélie Philibert, University of Montreal
The American organization Aligning Science Across Parkinson’s (ASAP) has awarded an eight million dollar grant to a research team led by professor from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Montreal Michel Desjardins to study the role of the immune system in the development of Parkinson’s disease, including links to bacterial and viral infections.
ASAP is a research initiative dedicated to advancing fundamental knowledge of Parkinson’s disease. The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, ASAP’s implementing partner, is behind the grant supporting the UdeM project.
In collaboration with their counterparts at McGill University, UdeM researchers and members of the Center for Biomedical Innovation – Michel Desjardins, full professor in the Department of Pathology and Cellular Biology, Louis-Eric Trudeau, full professor in the Department of Pharmacology and physiology, Nathalie Labrecque, full professor in the Department of Medicine, Janelle Drouin-Ouellet, associate professor in the Faculty of Pharmacy, and Pierre Thibault, full professor in the Department of Chemistry – will thus deepen their work on the triggering mechanisms of the disease, work begun in 2020 thanks to a first grant from ASAP.
This highly competitive funding marks an important milestone in research into Parkinson’s disease, a neurodegenerative condition that affects millions of individuals worldwide. In Canada, more than 100,000 people live with Parkinson’s disease and this number is expected to increase by 65% by 2031 due to the aging population.
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