KainosMed "KM-819, Parkinson's Disease Symptom Suppression Confirmed by PET Imaging"

[Asia Economy Reporter Hyunseok Yoo] Kainosmed recently announced on the 15th that it published a paper confirming experimental evidence that KM-819, a Parkinson's disease treatment, can suppress symptoms and slow disease progression using positron emission tomography (PET) in animal models.

Although many studies are underway to develop disease-modifying treatments for Parkinson's disease, no candidate treatment has yet demonstrated efficacy in clinical trials. This paper was published last month in Frontiers in Pharmacology, an influential international journal in basic and clinical pharmacology. The study was conducted by Professor Sang-eun Kim's team from the Department of Nuclear Medicine at Seoul National University Bundang Hospital, testing the efficacy of KM-819, and was a collaborative research effort. Prior to publication, the research team received the Young Award at the 2017 American Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging conference for preliminary results of the joint study.

The researchers performed [18F]FE-PE2I positron emission tomography (PET) on a subacute Parkinson's disease animal model treated with the neurotoxin MPTP. [18F]FE-PE2I is a widely used radioactive ligand to assess dopamine transporter (DAT) activity, which reflects dopamine transmission through nerve cells. A key feature of this study is that, unlike previous experiments, the ligand was injected into living Parkinson's disease animals and dopamine cells were observed using the specialized imaging technique PET, allowing observation of changes over time in the same animal. This technology can be directly applied to actual human Parkinson's disease patients.

In the animal model treated with KM-819, dopamine transporter activity in the striatal region was restored by approximately 20% compared to before treatment. In contrast, animals not administered KM-819 showed about a 10% decrease over the same period. This demonstrates that KM-819 not only protects nerve cells but also has some neurorestorative effects. Additionally, histological examination showed a significantly higher level of dopamine-producing cells in the KM-819 treated group compared to the untreated group.

A company representative explained, "This study reconfirmed the protective effect of KM-819 on the striatal dopaminergic system in a Parkinson's disease animal model by PET imaging, showing that KM-819 interferes with the cell death pathway of dopamine-producing neurons," adding, "The same method can be used to demonstrate efficacy in patients."

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