Alleviating Parkinson's disease without piercing the skull... Presenting magnetic field therapy

 Alleviating Parkinson's disease without piercing the skull... Presenting magnetic field therapy

2024.02.01

Basic Science Research Institute

Parkinson's rats have motor impairment and do not move much. Parkinson's rats that received nano-magnetogenetic DBS treatment showed active movements similar to those of normal rats. Provided by IBS.

A treatment that can relieve Parkinson's disease symptoms using a non-invasive method instead of surgery to drill into the skull has been proposed.

The Institute for Basic Science (IBS) announced on the 1st that the research team of Jin-Woo Cheon, director of the Nanomedicine Research Center, and Min-Seok Kwak, a research fellow, developed ‘nano-magnetic genetics-based deep brain stimulation’ that can treat Parkinson’s disease using magnetic fields.

Parkinson's disease is a degenerative brain disease that causes movement disorders such as tremors, stiffness, and postural instability due to the death of dopamine neurons, which are important in motor control. The number of patients is increasing significantly due to aging, but there is still no fundamental treatment.

Severely ill patients have difficulty living their daily lives with drug therapy alone and undergo deep brain stimulation (DBS), a surgical procedure. It is a surgical method that involves making a hole in the skull, inserting electrodes deep into the brain, and installing a stimulation generator under the skin of the chest to apply electrical stimulation to the brain. It can alleviate Parkinson's disease symptoms by regulating signals between nerve cells.

However, because DBS implants electrodes deep into the brain, serious side effects such as cerebral hemorrhage and tissue damage can occur. Another disadvantage is that the therapeutic effect is maintained only while electrical stimulation is applied. To overcome these limitations, the research team devised a method of applying the previously developed nano-magnetogenetic technology to DBS. Nano-magnetogenetics is a technology that controls brain function by wirelessly activating specific nerve cells in the brain using magnetic fields.

When magnetic nano-sized particles are injected deep into the brain, the magnetic nanoparticles respond to a specific magnetic field and generate a force of about 2 pN (piconewton, 1 pN = 1 trillionth of a N). When a magnetic field is stimulated using a magnetogenetic device, magnetic nanoparticles attach to the surface of specific nerve cells and open the Piezo-1 ion channel, a membrane protein, leading to nerve cell activation. A magnetogenetic device is a device that can non-invasively deliver magnetic field stimulation deep into the human brain.

When the research team applied nano-magnetogenetics-based DBS technology to a Parkinson's rat model, neurons in the subthalamic nucleus, a brain region, were activated more than 10 times. His sense of balance and mobility more than doubled, showing near-normal athletic ability. Parkinson's rats that were repeatedly stimulated every day for two weeks maintained 35% of their recovered motor skills 24 hours after the stimulation was stopped.

Director Cheon said, “By using nano-magnetic genetics, it is possible to treat the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease by stimulating nerve cells non-invasively and more precisely than the existing DBS method,” adding, “Not only Parkinson’s disease, but also various neurological diseases such as epilepsy and Alzheimer’s disease. “We expect it to be used for disease research and treatment,” he said. The research results were published in the international academic journal ‘Nano Letters’ on the 10th.

Jin-woo Cheon, director of the IBS Nanomedicine Research Center, Min-seok Kwak, research director, and Wook-jin Shin (first author). Provided by IBS.

Reporter Moon Se-young moon09@donga.com