PACAP/VIP Glycopeptide Agonists as Neuroprotective Therapies for Parkinson's Disease

 描述（由申请人提供）：帕金森病（PD）是第二常见的神经退行性疾病，在美国影响超过100万人。PD导致行走、书写和说话等运动困难，这是由于多巴胺能神经元死亡导致大脑中的化学多巴胺不足而发生的。目前的PD疗法只能治疗症状，不能逆转导致多巴胺产生脑细胞死亡的潜在疾病过程。这种情况导致了对神经保护或神经恢复的新策略的广泛兴趣。在实验室中改变疾病过程的最有希望的方法依赖于被称为“生长因子”的内源性脑化学物质。“几种生长因子已经证明了在PD动物模型中逆转疾病过程的能力。这些生长因子中的一些已经显示出足够的前景，它们已经在PD患者的临床试验中进行了测试。一组有希望的生长因子是肽“分泌素”血管活性肠肽（VIP）和腺苷酸环化酶激活多肽（PACAP），它们在神经元存活、神经保护、炎症和免疫调节中起重要作用。PACAP对PD啮齿动物模型中多巴胺能神经元的损失具有保护作用，但仅在直接注射到大脑中之后。我们建议通过产生PACAP/VIP糖肽来规避这一困难，PACAP/VIP糖肽是表面活性剂，在体内具有延长的半衰期，并且可以有效地穿过血脑屏障（BBB）。我们已经开发了一种新的技术平台来开发这些糖肽类似物，这些糖肽类似物显示出更高的稳定性，在所需受体处保持有效的结合和功效，并且渗透BBB。我们将合成一系列基于PACAP和VIP的新型糖肽，筛选在CHO细胞中表达的PAC 1，VPAC 1和VPAC 2受体上的活性，并在PD动物模型中测试最有前途的化合物在全身给药后的神经保护和神经恢复活性。我们将进一步完善 我们的药物开发通过“鸟枪式”微透析来有效地量化我们的药物随时间的大脑水平，允许直接测量药物在体内的稳定性。这是通过多重碰撞诱导裂解质谱（MSn）完成的。通过这种方式，我们希望产生一种或多种候选药物用于进一步开发，最终导致批准用于人类使用和临床应用于治疗PD。

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Parkinson's disease (PD) is the 2nd most common neurodegenerative disorder, affecting over 1 million people in the US. PD causes difficulties with movements such as walking, writing, and speaking that occur because of deficits in the chemical dopamine in the brain due to dopaminergic neuron death. Current therapies for PD only treat the symptoms and do not reverse underlying disease processes that cause dopamine-producing brain cells to die. This situation has led to widespread interest in new strategies of neuroprotection or neurorestoration. The most promising approaches to modifying the disease process in the laboratory have relied on endogenous brain chemicals known as "growth factors." Several growth factors have demonstrated the ability to reverse the disease process in animal models of PD. A few of these growth factors have shown sufficient promise that they have been tested in clinical trials in humans with PD. One promising set of such growth factors are the peptide "secretins" Vasoactive Intestinal Peptide (VIP) and Pituitary Adenylate Cyclase-Activating Polypeptide (PACAP), which play important roles in neuronal survival, neuroprotection, inflammation and immunomodulation. PACAP is protective against the loss of dopaminergic neurons in rodent models of PD, but only after being injected directly into the brain. We propose to circumvent this difficulty by creating PACAP/VIP glycopeptides, which are surfactants, possess extended half-lives in vivo, and can efficiently cross the blood-brain barrier (BBB). We have developed a new technology platform to develop these glycopeptide analogues that show increased stability, maintain potent binding and efficacy at the desired receptor(s), and that penetrate the BBB. We will synthesize a series of novel glycopeptides based on PACAP and VIP, screen for activity at the PAC1, VPAC1 and VPAC2 receptors expressed in CHO cells, and test the most promising compounds in animal models of PD for neuroprotective and neurorestorative activity after systemic administration. We will further refine our drug development by "shotgun" microdialysis to efficiently quantify brain levels of our drugs over time, allowing direct measurement of drug stability in vivo. This is accomplished by multiple collision-induced fragmentation mass spectroscopy (MSn). In this way we hope to produce one or more drug candidates for further development, ultimately leading to approval for human use and clinical application in the treatment of PD.