ASAP and Allen Institute Partner to Advance Parkinson’s Research with Brain Cell Atlas

ASAP and the Allen Institute Gathered to Discover Insights into Parkinson's and Other Diseases

Announcement

The Allen Institute and the Aligning Science Across Parkinson’s 9asap initiative are gathering to explore insights into neurodegenerative-related disease and Parkinson's with its extensive technology of the Allen Brain Cell (ABC) atlas visualization tool. The tool merges data from several human brain cells. It will also help researchers to discover the brain at unparalleled resolution. With this collaboration, ASAP’s collaborative research network (CRN) cloud repository will drive data from 3 million human cells from 9 brain regions from people with Parkinson of which 6.4 million human cells were already accessible in the ABC atlas visualization tool. This led to an increase of 50%. The discoveries will fuel R&D and will help introduce a responsive treatment option for parkinson’s.

Effective Collaboration and Other Support

The collaboration has highlighted the first-ever data for Parkinson’s disease patients that is considered as ABC atlas. The increase in accessibility to the data, with a common language for cell types such as Allen and ASAP, will provide a valuable example across the research group. This will encourage researchers to implement disease-related changes for specific cell types of the brain. ASAP is functioning with the Michael J. Fox Foundation for parkinson’s research (MJFF) to support the work and execute the program.

The NIH Brain Initiative Cell Atlas Network (BICAN) contributed to the discovery of a standardized reference of the cell types that build the human brain as a replication of the human genome project. The seattle alzheimer’s Disease Brain Cell Atlas (sea-ad) was the first ever disease-finding to approach a cellular reference framework to address the affected and vulnerability of cell types in alzheimer’s disease.

Parkinson’s Disease and Data

Parkinson’s disease is declared as the second growing and common neurodegenerative condition globally. Around 10 million individuals have parkinson’s and will increase by 2040. In parkinson’s case, data fetched from postmortem human brain samples are important and limited. These data are time-intensive and expensive to manage and collect the samples. This data from the sample provides access for leveraging discovery and research.

The postmortem human brain is the main sample for various foundational exploration in neuroscience, as well as the identification of pathological features of Parkinson's and Alzheimer’s. The discoveries, like addressing dopamine-generative neurons, are the ones found in parkinson’s that helped develop dopamine replacement therapies, such as L-dopa (effective treatment for Parkinson's). This encouraged development in therapies and in addressing biomarkers for disease diagnosis.