Esther Sammler, a former PhD student with Dario Alessi and consultant neurologist in Dundee has been awarded an Academic Health Sciences Partnership in Tayside (AHSP) Clinical Fellowship which is aimed at promoting translational research. Esther will set up a translational link between the movement disorder service at NHS Tayside and the MRC PPU, looking at signalling pathways of Parkinson's disease associated genes in biosamples from healthy controls and patients with Parkinson's disease. Esther’s initial aims will be to set up quantitative assays to determine LRRK2 activity in human blood cells, based on the ability of LRRK2 to phosphorylate Rab GTPases. This work will enable Esther to explore whether a subgroup of Parkinson’s patients that display elevated LRRK2 activity can be detected. If this was the case this would open the door to test whether these patients would benefit from LRRK2 inhibitors.