Nik Maniatis and Kerri Kinghorn receive £1.1m from the MRC to research Parkinson's Disease

Professor Nik Maniatis together with Dr Kerri Kinghorn in GEE and collaborators, have received major funding from the MRC for their research proposal “ An integrative and transethnic approach to identify novel functional genes in Parkinson's disease (PD) using in silico and in vivo experiments”. They plan to use an integrative approach to identify transethnic disease loci using population-specific genetic maps. They will then assess which of these loci confer risk of disease by altering the expression of neighbouring and more distal genes.  The candidate risk loci will then be functionally validated in well-established Drosophila PD models. The identification and functional elucidation of susceptibility genes holds great promise for the discovery of new therapeutic targets and treatment strategies for Parkinson's.