Collaboration brings together charity, university and pharmaceutical sectors

Landmark, launching today, is a three-year research partnership that aims to understand Parkinson’s disease in unprecedented detail.

 Scientists at Imperial College London will sequence hundreds of tissue samples from the Parkinson’s UK Brain Bank, based at the university, in order to build up a map of gene expression caused by Parkinsons across different cell types.

The resulting global resource of data will identify predictive biomarkers for Parkinson's disease and will ultimately help to discover new drug targets.

The Landmark project is based on original work carried out by Professor Michael Johnson in Imperial’s Department of Brain Sciences, who will be its principal investigator.

 The public-private partnership involves Parkinsons UK, Imperial, and pharmaceutical companies GSK, Novartis, Roche and UCB. Each pharmaceutical company will contribute to the costs of the scientific work and will receive early insights into all discoveries made that can inform their development of new therapies for Parkinson’s. Landmark is being made possible by a £4m founding gift from the Gatsby charitable foundation.

 Professor Johnson and his team will apply a technique called snRNAseq (single nucleusRibonucleic Acid sequencing) to scan and quantify the hundreds of tissue samples donated to the Brain Bank by Parkinson’s patients and their families. 

 This will allow them to understand the biological ways in which Parkinson’s takes hold and progresses in the brain at a cellular and genetic level. Their work will produce a major datasets that can be used by scientists across the world researching the condition.

 The new insights gained will also feed directly into Parkinson’s Virtual Biotech - the drug development arm of Parkinson’s UK, in partnership with the Parkinson’s Foundation - to power the creation of new treatments for the community. Ultimately, however, the unique datasets will be made freely and openly available to the global research community.

 Professor Johnson said: “There is lots of excitement around the use of machine learning and artificial intelligence for drug target discovery. The problem is, without high quality data these computational models still end up with the wrong answer. Landmark will become a globally important resource, establishing the standardised genomic data at scale that these models require to come up with the right answers.”

 Parkinson’s is the fastest growing neurological condition in the world and affects around 153,000 people in the UK. The condition is caused by a lack of dopamine in the brain and there are more than 40 symptoms, from tremor and pain to anxiety.

Despite decades of research, treatments that can stop, reverse or prevent Parkinson’s remain out of reach. Although inroads have been made in understanding the causes of the condition, a complete picture of how and why people develop Parkinson’s still eludes experts.

Professor David Dexter, Director of Research at Parkinson’s UK, says: “The Landmark project is a highlight of my career. I set up the Brain Bank 22 years ago because I knew that one day techniques like these would be possible, allowing us to unlock the secrets held in the brains of people with Parkinson’s.

 “We are delighted to be bringing together charities, academia and pharmaceutical partners for the first time on this project. To see it launch and know of the potential it has to ultimately change the lives of people living with Parkinson’s is incredible.”