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In 2007, with the relocation of Drs. Jeffery M Vance, Eden Martin and William Scott from Duke University to the University of Miami, Miller School of Medicine, the Udall center will also move to Miami, with Project II (Dr. Mike Hauser, Project PI) remaining at Duke. Dr. Jeffery M Vance remains as the Primary Principal Investigator. With the relocation, several additional investigators have joined the Udall Center. Dr. Stephan Zuchner will head the Neuropathology and Molecular Core, and Dr Gaofeng Wang becomes a co-Principle Investigator on Project III. Dr. Deborah Mash, who heads the University of Miami Brain Bank, also joins the Neuropathology and Molecular core. Neurologists Spyros Papapetropoulos and Carlos Singer join the Clinical core as well. The Udall Center will be located in the Miami Institute for Human Genomics at the Miller School of Medicine. The center's primary focus is to identify genes and thus mechanisms that lead to the development of Parkinson's disease (PD). To do this, the center has developed many novel approaches to aggressively apply the information of the human genome project to PD.

Dr. Eden Martin heads Project 1. The goal of this project is to examine candidate genes based on the principle of genomic convergence, and to enhance these efforts by including analysis of complex genetic and environmental interactions in our large family sample. Genomic convergence involves converging the data from multiple, independent genomic approaches, most notably gene expression and linkage analysis, to prioritize genes for association studies. This has been a very successful approach, whose use has been developed by our Udall Group. Association studies in Project I have included work on potential associations of twenty-seven genes including Fibroblast growth factor 20 and demonstration of a gene-environment interaction between polymorphisms of inducible nitric oxide (NOS2A) and smoking. Additional gene-gene and gene-environment interactions are currently under investigation. Project 2, spearheaded by Dr. Mike Hauser, with Dr. Yi-Ju Li as co-PI, utilizes material from the Udall Center's autopsy program to look for expression changes in the substantia nigra and other affected areas, developing candidate genes for Project 1. Project III, headed by Dr. Jeffery Vance, seeks to identify why the J and K haplogroups of the mitochondrial genome are protective for Parkinson Disease. Progress has been made in designing a proteomic chip array for complex I through work with Dr. Rod Capaldi at Mitosciences, a co-PI of Project III. Initial gene expression studies have been completed on fibroblasts of individuals with specific mitochondrial haplogroups. Project IV, headed by Dr William Scott, looks at association studies in linkage regions. It has recently completed a new linkage study of 6000 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPS) in approximately twice the number of families of our initial linkage study, and a high density SNP scan across the chromosome 5 linkage region.

The Udall Center also has a large clinical core, headed by Dr. William Scott, collecting DNA and clinical and environmental data on Parkinson patients and siblings. Our neuropathology core, with Dr. Zuchner as the head, has a large, well-received prospectively recruited (Rita Jewett) autopsy program, providing much-needed high-quality frozen tissue for research study, with pathologic evaluation by Dr. Christine Hulette at Duke. Finally, the Administration core has sponsored two young investigators in PD research. The first, Dr. Sofia Oliveria of the IGC in Lisbon, Portugal, has been sponsored to study biomarkers and proteomics in PD patients in serum. This support produced initial work that has led to Dr. Oliveria now obtaining funding by the FCT of Portugal for continuing the project. A second young investigator, Dr. Lina Shehadeh, has been added and is developing system biology investigations in PD.

Last updated August 13, 2008