Researchers use probiotics to treat Parkinson's disease

Researchers have engineered a probiotic that can synthesize the dopamine precursor L-DOPA, an effective lead drug in the treatment of Parkinson's disease

"Our ability to harness the metabolic capabilities of beneficial microorganisms living in the gut to synthesize molecules is the 'gold standard' strategy for treating Parkinson's disease," said Anumantha Kanthasamy, Ph.

Piyush Padhi, a doctoral student in Kanthasamy's lab, will present this study at the annual meeting of the American Association for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics during the American Experimental Biology (EB) 2022 Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, April 2-5.

Replacing dopamine in the form of levodopa tablets taken 3-4 times a day has been used to treat Parkinson's disease for over 60 years

To address this challenge, Kanthasamy's research team used newly developed synthetic biology and genetic engineering techniques to generate a safe, tolerable probiotic that can synthesize L-dopa from tyrosine produced by the body

"After several iterations and improvements to gut microbe-based drug delivery technology, we have developed a gut-healthy probiotic that produces stable levels of L-DOPA and can be highly tuned to provide each the dose required by the patient

The ideal treatment is to take a capsule pill once or twice a day

Trials of the new drug delivery method in rodent and canine models have shown that it can achieve stabilization of L-DOPA levels in the plasma and stabilization of dopamine levels in the brain without any unwanted fluctuations

"We hope that this continuous, non-pulsatile, microbe-based approach to L-DOPA administration will limit the development and progression of levodopa-induced dyskinesia,