Nicola Heser and her son Andrew recently visited the MRC PPU laboratories to learn about the research being carried out by the groups of Miratul Muqit and Dario Alessi to better understand the causes of Parkinson’s disease. In particular they heard about the role of the PINK1 and LRRK2 kinases respectively including recent work from their labs pinpointing their regulation of a family of small second messenger molecules known as Rab GTPases. This discovery represents the first ‘hub’ molecule that can be regulated by different Parkinson’s genes. It is also likely to lead to new methods to monitor the activity of these kinases that will facilitate the development of drugs targeting these important enzymes in patients with Parkinson’s.

Nicola, who herself has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s and is under the care of Miratul at Ninewells Hospital, then donated a cheque arising from a collection raised at her mother’s 80th birthday to support research into the disease.

Miratul said “we are extremely grateful to Nicola’s mother and all the family for this generous donation which will be extremely important for our research studies into Parkinson’s at the MRC unit”.