Exploring cell specificity n Parkinson’s disease

Dr Indranil Basak, Senior Research Fellow, Department of Biochemistry

Why do some neurons resist death in brain diseases while other neurons die? This is one of the major unanswered questions in neuroscience. In Parkinson’s disease, dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra region of the human brain die. In contrast, cortical neurons resist death and are only affected mildly at a much later stage of the disease. The protective mechanisms that keep the cortical neurons alive remain obscure. In our team, we use skin cell-derived brain cell models and CRISPR technology to explore the uncharted mechanisms behind the cell-specificity conundrum in brain diseases like Parkinson’s disease.