Current treatments provide only short-term relief for such symptoms. But a team of Case Western Reserve University researchers have discovered a particular biochemical route that plays a role in the debilitating neurological condition.

Their findings, published recently in Molecular Neurodegeneration, reveal how harmful protein buildup in brain cells causes movement-controlling neurons to die—a hallmark of Parkinson’s disease.

“We’ve uncovered a harmful interaction between proteins that damages the brain’s cellular powerhouses, called mitochondria,” said Xin Qi, the study’s senior author and Jeanette M. and Joseph S. Silber Professor of Brain Sciences at the Case Western Reserve School of Medicine. “More importantly, we’ve developed a targeted approach that can block this interaction and restore healthy brain cell function.”