Millipore data could show link between Pink1 gene and PD

Massachusetts, USA-based Millipore Corp, a life science firm providing technologies, tools and services for bioscience research and biopharmaceutical manufacturing, has published a study claiming to have established the first functional link between the PINK1 gene and neural degeneration in the Public Library of Science's journal PLoS ONE.

Certain forms of familial Parkinson's disease have been previously linked to mutations in the PINK1 gene, but no mechanistic link between the gene and the disease has yet been established, the firm says. By suppressing the PINK1 gene in neurons derived from the ReNcell VM cell line, scientists in the laboratory of Nicholas Wood at the Institute of Molecular Neuroscience in London, UK, showed that loss of PINK1 function resulted in increased programmed cell death, more free radicals, decreased long-term survival of neurons, and other hallmarks of Parkinson's disease, according to data quoted in the study.