Below is a transcript of our conversation with Tommie Cammarano, Ph.D. student at Central Michigan University:
David Nicholas:
I'm David Nicholas and this is Central Focus, a weekly look at research activity and innovative work from Central Michigan University students and faculty. Parkinson's Disease is one of the most debilitating neurological conditions, and it remains without a cure. Treatment options for Parkinson's are the subject of research at CMU. I spoke with Tommy Cammarano, a second year PhD student, about her work, which was recently presented at a conference at Van Andel Research Institute.
Was this building off of prior research and or where then did the insight come to you to look into this specific potential process as maybe something that could lead to a path to treatment?
Tommie Cammarano:
My (my) research basically has built off of everyone in the last like 10 years. We've all done the same umbrella of. So, we originally were looking at exercise as a treatment and stem cell therapy separately. Then we combined them because exercise has been shown to at least minimize the symptoms of Parkinson's disease. Where you see, like (like) Kirk Gibson for example. Didn't have symptoms until he retired. So that's interesting because he was exercising so well while he was playing baseball. And then suddenly he was getting a Parkinson's diagnosis. So, exercise can minimize symptoms or at least push them back until you're a little more stagnant and then stem cell therapy has been a widely researched area of neurodegenerative diseases. So, we've seen a little bit of improvement with each of. So, our hypothesis was why don't we combine them and see if they can help each other basically. What we wanted to test is that if these cells are in the brain in the movement center, can exercise encourage them to integrate into the brain better and replace those lost cells. Because without that exercise integration they're not performing as well, and they're dying off or not releasing in a controlled manner, and it's more erratic.
DN:
A two-month study, which is (is) noted can be the equivalent to several years study in humans. Two months study with rats. Has that study, is there a plan to repeat that in subsequent cycles so that you get even more data to look at more conclusive? What is the status of (of) where the study is at right now?
TC:
My current dissertation study is what this is about. The research that I presented was my pilot study, so my pilot study has concluded, and the results were good enough for me to continue that for my main dissertation study. I'm only a second year PhD student right now, so I am planning to have 64 rats in that study. Not nearly done yet but still planning to go ahead with. I assume our future grad students will build off of that as well what I have done with the prior ones so…
DN:
Where would this then be in the timeline of potentially getting this to a point where it could be applied to then testing in humans? To take that leap from the (the) hypothesis and then potentially getting to applying it to treatments for people?
TC:
The research that we do is called preclinical. So that means in animals we want to see if it works. If it works and is replicated, it gets moved to translational. So that means it is still in rats, but they tweak it a little bit to be, to make it more safe and accessible to humans, or at least more likely to get that like approval to have a clinical trial. And then once all of that is good and published, then it moves to clinical after approval for that. That's like a (a) long ways ahead. I know that Parkinson's is, to my knowledge, the only. neurodegenerative disease in the United States that does have a stem cell clinical trial right now, but I think that's (that's) a little further ahead. Currently, that's not what's on our minds right now. Is, does it work and can it be translational, I guess? So that's the first step.
DN:
Inroads into the treatment of one of the most puzzling, disturbing and (and) debilitating conditions that we are aware of and that is Parkinson's Disease. Tommie Cammarano, second year neuroscience PhD student here at CMU, congratulations on the opportunity to present at the conference and all the best as the (the) study, the processes and (and) future cycles and publication and so forth to follow into the research that you're doing. Thank you so much for sharing it with us.
TC:
Thank you!
