Parkinson's Disease

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder caused by loss of dopaminergic neurons. Patients demonstrate movement-related dysfunction early on, with cognitive decline and dementia in later stages of the disease. Although there are inheritable forms of PD, the majority of diagnoses are sporadic PD, where the cause is unknown. Microarray analyses of multiple PD animal models have shed insight into the mechanism of PD initiation and progression. Cellular functions commonly dysregulated in PD include ubiquitination, ion transport, apoptosis, and dopaminergic signaling. PD research focuses on both known mutated genes, such as Alpha-synuclein (SNCA) and Parkin (PARK2), as well as novel genes identified from microarray experiments.

QIAGEN provides a broad range of assay technologies for Parkinson’s disease research that enables analysis of gene expression and regulation, epigenetic modification, genotyping, and signal transduction pathway activation. Solutions optimized for Parkinson’s disease studies include PCR array, miRNA, siRNA, mutation analysis, pathway reporter, chromatin IP, DNA methylation, and protein expression products.