Wenbo Zhou, PhD, is interested in neurodegenerative diseases of aging such as Parkinson’s disease. For the past 15 years, he has studied genes that cause Parkinson’s disease in order to develop novel therapies. He has created a series of new mutations of the protein alpha-synuclein and found that tyrosine at position 39 in human alpha-synuclein is the most important residue in initiating protein aggregation. Dr. Zhou has generated transgenic pre-clinical models expressing human mutant alpha-synuclein (Y39C). These models develop age-dependent, progressive motor and cognitive deficits as well as alpha-synuclein protein inclusions in the brain, mimicking Parkinson’s symptoms and neuropathology in humans. Using this model and discovery that the FDA approved drug phenylbutyrate can upregulate the neuroprotective gene DJ-1, his team has found that they can stop Parkinson’s from developing in this model. To create dopamine neurons for possible use in neurotransplantation, Dr. Zhou has developed induced pluripotent stem cells from Parkinson patients’ skin fibroblasts.