News Releases & Research Results Fluorescence technology to visualize mitochondrial mitophagy - Contribution to the diagnosis and treatment of Parkinson's disease -

The results of R&D project led by Team Leader Atsushi Miyawaki and Researcher Hiroyuki Katayama of the Cell Function Research Team, RIKEN Center for Brain Science, Associate Professor Hiroyuki Hioki of Juntendo University School of Medicine, and others.

• A fluorescent sensor "mito-SRAI" to visualize mitophagy, a cellular phenomenon of selective removal of mitochondria with stress-induced damage, was developed and applied to the pathological diagnosis of Parkinson's disease and the development of a therapeutic drug.
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• Using this sensor, the dysfunction of mitophagy was demonstrated to be correlated with dopaminergic neuronal death in the midbrain of a Parkinson's disease model mouse, and a candidate drug for Parkinson's disease could be successfully selected from 76,000 compounds.
• The results of R&D should contribute to the medical research on neurodegenerative diseases, including Parkinson's disease, and all diseases due to mitochondrial dysfunction.

This R&D project was conducted with the support of the Brain Mapping by Integrated Neurotechnologies for Disease Studies, etc. by AMED.

The results of R&D were published online in the scientific journal Cell on May 21.

Katayama H., et al. Visualizing and modulating mitophagy for therapeutic studies of neurodegeneration Cell
DOI：10.1016/j.cell.2020.04.025