Researchers have found an essential key that could lead to new treatments and possibly a cure for Parkinson’s disease. They have identified the protein that kills dopamine-producing cells in the brain—and a way to disable it.

Parkinson’s disease sufferers lack a sufficient amount of dopamine. Anumantha Kanthasamy, a distinguished professor of biomedical sciences and W. Eugene and Linda R. Lloyd Endowed Chair in Neurotoxicology at Iowa State University, discovered that a novel protein—known as protein kinase-C—destroys dopamine-producing cells.

“We have millions of cells in our brains,” says Kanthasamy, “In Parkinson’s, about 10,000 of these brain cells die; no one knows why.”

Kanthasamy and his research staff discovered a compound that neutralizes the cell-killing kinase-C and allows the dopamine-producing cells to survive and function.

“With a lot of hard work, and little bit of luck, we found something important,” he says. “And when you find something like this you say, ‘This is great because it can be a target for developing new drugs.’”

Now, Kanthasamy’s group is looking for additional compounds that also can serve to neutralize protein kinase-C. By identifying more compounds that perform the function of neutralizing kinase-C, researchers are more likely to locate one that works well and has few side effects.

This discovery is expected to provide new treatment options to stop the progression of the disease or even cure it.