BERG Presents Data Uncovering a Novel Contributor to Parkinson's Disease at Society for Neuroscience 2016 Meeting

BERG Interrogative Biology® Platform Identifies Potential Contributor to LRRK2-mediated Cell Death in Parkinson's Disease

BOSTON, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- BERG, a biopharmaceutical company uncovering health solutions through a data-driven, biological research approach, today unveiled data from a recent study that clarified the role of a genetic mutation in the LRRK2 gene, which represents a major risk factor for both sporadic and familial Parkinson's disease (PD), at the Society for Neuroscience's Neuroscience 2016 meeting. The study utilized BERG's Interrogative Biology ® platform with the aim to understand the mechanism behind LRRK2-driven PD, and the resulting analysis identified p53-inducible gene 3 (PIG3) as a novel regulator of cell death in Parkinson's disease. The discovery may serve as a novel drug target for development of new therapeutics for PD.

Through BERG's Interrogative Biology® platform, the study analyzed data points of skin cells from PD patients obtained from BERG's partner The Parkinson's Institute to understand the neurological disorder. This study also showcased the predictive power of Interrogative Biology® as a discovery tool for mining fundamental biology from peripheral cells to better understand inherent molecular drivers of neurodegenerative disease.

"We're excited to continue to push the boundaries of what's possible with the Interrogative Biology^® system," said BERG CEO, co-founder and president Niven R. Narain. "The Interrogative Biology^® system is able to fill the knowledge gap through seemingly unrelated patient biology – as in this instance, where we used skin cells to discover key insights about a neurological disorder.  In addition, unraveling novel biology into the CNS disease space where the basic understanding of diseases like PD is not fully elucidated offers the field insight that may lead to developing disease modifying drugs."

The BERG Interrogative Biology^® platform maps patient disease states by interrogating both the healthy and diseased states of the patient biology and data to uncover a network of causal relationships between historical, molecular and other data types and patient outcomes. BERG will further explore mechanisms associated with LRRK2 and PIG3, and develop additional uses for the Interrogative Biology ® platform to understand the mysteries associated with Parkinson's disease, and other neurodegenerative diseases, to develop safe and effective treatment pathways.