Gold nanoclusters for Parkinson's disease treatment

Drug discovery for Parkinson's disease (PD) is challenging. Here we report that gold nanoclusters (AuNCs) can serve as a novel candidate for the design of anti-PD drugs. With N-isobutyryl-L-cysteine (L-NIBC) protected AuNCs as an example, we show that AuNCs effectively prevent a-Synuclein (alpha-Syn) fibrillation in in vitro experiments. Cell experiments demonstrate good neuroprotective effects in PD cell models. More significantly, experiments of mouse PD model further show that AuNCs largely ameliorate the behavioral disorders of sick mice. In addition, immunohistochemical and western blot (WB) analyses indicate that AuNCs can significantly reverse dopaminergic (DA) neuron loss in substantia nigra and striatum of sick mice. This study opens up a novel avenue to develop anti-PD drugs and points a new direction for AuNCs in medicinal applications.

帕金森病（PD）的药物研发具有挑战性。在此我们报道，金纳米团簇（AuNCs）可作为设计抗帕金森病药物的一种新型候选物。以N - 异丁酰 - L - 半胱氨酸（L - NIBC）保护的金纳米团簇为例，我们表明金纳米团簇在体外实验中能有效阻止α - 突触核蛋白（alpha - Syn）的纤维化。细胞实验在帕金森病细胞模型中显示出良好的神经保护作用。更重要的是，小鼠帕金森病模型实验进一步表明，金纳米团簇在很大程度上改善了患病小鼠的行为障碍。此外，免疫组化和蛋白质印迹（WB）分析表明，金纳米团簇能够显著逆转患病小鼠黑质和纹状体中多巴胺能（DA）神经元的损失。这项研究开辟了开发抗帕金森病药物的新途径，并为金纳米团簇在医学应用中指明了新方向。