LISBON, Dec. 15 (Xinhua) -- Portuguese researcher Luis Pereira de Almeida will lead a new European study on Parkinson's disease and Machado-Joseph disease, the University of Coimbra said in a statement on Monday.
The mission for Almeida, from the university's Center for Neurosciences and Cellular Biology, is to find "potential therapeutic targets in Parkinson's and Machado-Joseph disease," according to the statement.
"The research is intended to study the interaction of autophagia (the cleaning mechanism inside cells) with the secretion of exosomes (cell-derived vesicles), and how they contribute to the spread of the disease to other brain cells," Almeida said in the statement.
The program, known as "SynSpread," will be carried out over three years and has an overall budget of 750,000 euros (932,500 U.S. dollars). It will focus on "understanding the role of the migration of proteins involved in the two incurable diseases."
Almeida will lead a Portuguese team of 20 researchers and coordinate teams of researchers at the University of Luxembourg and Paris Descartes University.
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