Our manuscript, titled “The beneficial effect of a prolyl oligopeptidase inhibitor, KYP-2047, on alpha-synuclein clearance and autophagy in A30P transgenic mouse“, got accepted for publication to Neurobiology of Disease (impact factor 5.642). In this paper, we showed that PREP inhibition reduced specifically the toxic species of alpha-synuclein, high-molecular weight oligomers, in point mutated alpha-synuclein transgenic mouse. More importantly, we also described the positive effect of PREP inhibition on autophagy – one of the most important cellular mechanisms to remove protein aggregates. This has a high relevance also on other diseases with protein accumulation such as Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s disease, and may well raise the interest on PREP inhibitors as a drug development target.

PhD student Mari Savolainen was the first author of the paper, and this work was done in collaboration with NIDA, Baltimore and Georgetown University, DC. These studies were funded by the Academy of Finland, Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation, Finnish Parkinson Foundation, Sigrid Juselius Foundation and University of Helsinki grants.