“Understanding the loss in sense of smell in Parkinson’s is having its moment right now,” says Dr. Michael Schlossmacher. “Our interdisciplinary team is on the leading edge of this topic, making discoveries that could one day impact diagnosis, prevention, and possibly, patient care.”An international team led by Dr. Michael Schlossmacher received a US$6 million grant from the Aligning Science Across Parkinson’s (ASAP) initiative in partnership with The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research to continue their work on reduced sense of smell in Parkinson’s disease.
Team Schlossmacher will continue this work as part of ASAP’s Collaborative Research Network, an international, multidisciplinary, and multi-institutional network of collaborating investigators who are working to accelerate the pace of discovery for Parkinson’s disease and drive new ideas into the R&D pipeline.
The funded work will build on exciting leads generated through an initial US$9 million ASAP Collaborative Research Network grant in 2021.
For example, Ottawa team members found clumps of the Parkinson’s-associated protein alpha-synuclein in nerve cells that process scents in the nose. The team is looking at what causes these clumps and whether they’re linked to subsequent Parkinson’s symptoms.
Team members in Germany and Texas found using MRI that a part of the brain involved in smell processing called the pirifirom cortex is smaller in people with Parkinson’s. They are studying how this area changes over time, and whether it could be used to diagnose the disease or measure its progression.
Team members in Ottawa also created and tested a new five-minute scratch-and-sniff test that works just as well as the currently used 40-item test. They hope the shorter test is more likely to be used in efforts to catch Parkinson’s early, as 80 per cent of patients have a reduced sense of smell, starting many years before motor symptoms arise.
“Understanding the loss in sense of smell in Parkinson’s is having its moment right now,” says Dr. Schlossmacher, neurologist and Director of The Ottawa Hospital’s Neuroscience Program, Bhargava Family Research Chair in Neurodegeneration and Professor at the University of Ottawa. “Our interdisciplinary team is on the leading edge of this topic, making discoveries that could one day impact diagnosis, prevention, and possibly, patient care.”
Lead PI: Michael Schlossmacher (The Ottawa Hospital, University of Ottawa). Co-investigators: Maxime Rousseaux (University of Ottawa), Benjamin Arenkiel (Baylor College of Medicine), Brit Mollenhauer (University Medical Center Göttingen), Christine Stadelmann (University Medical Center Göttingen). Collaborators: Zhandong Liu (Baylor College of Medicine), Natalina Salmaso (Carleton University), John Woulfe (The Ottawa Hospital, University of Ottawa), Armen Saghatelyan (University of Ottawa), Gianfilippo Coppola (Yale School of Medicine) Project Manager: Julianna Tomlinson (The Ottawa Hospital)
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