Dr. Ekemini Riley:
That is the hope. So there are Parkinson’s therapies that are already in human testing that target GBA1, which is the gene in which a new variant was identified. And this gene has already been known to increase the risk for developing Parkinson’s disease and people of other ancestries.
And with this discovery, and more like it, and being that we are already headed into an era of more targeted treatment, it really is the hope that it will widen the aperture and include more variants, and therefore more people who may be affected.
I think one major corollary here is the cancer field where, you know, if you have a cancer, and you get it genotypes, there can be a particular treatment that is specific to what your cancer expresses. And a physician may be able to prescribe that for the patient, that is really the hope that we can get there to that place with Parkinson’s disease.
And I would say, you know, really, we are there about a few other risk factors in Parkinson’s disease for which clinical trials are being run and targeting those risk factors. And so now, knowing about this particular risk factor, we can really start to feel more research into this area, and you know, again, has the potential to revolutionize treatment options for underserved populations.
