Identification of antiparkinsonian drugs in the 6-hydroxydopamine zebrafish model.

Parkinson's disease (PD) is known as a movement disorder due to characteristic motor features. Existing therapies for PD are only symptomatic, and their efficacy decreases as disease progresses. Zebrafish, a vertebrate in which parkinsonism has been modelled, offers unique features for the identification of molecules with antiparkinsonian properties.

Tapentadol Prevents Motor Impairments in a Mouse Model of Dyskinesia.

The motor features in Parkinson's disease (PD) are associated with the degeneration of dopaminergic cells in the substantia nigra in the brain. Thus, the gold-standard in PD therapeutics still consists of dopamine replacement with levodopa. However, as the disease progresses, this therapeutic option becomes less effective and can be accompanied by levodopa-induced complications.

Sonic hedgehog and retinoic acid are not sufficient to induce motoneuron generation in the avian caudal neural tube.

The caudal neural tube (CNT) of the avian embryo is devoid of both dorsal and ventral roots. We show that the lack of ventral roots in the CNT, from somite 48 caudalwards, is due to an absence of post-mitotic motoneurons (MNs). The absence of MNs is not due to a defective notochordal induction since Sonic Hedgehog (SHH) signaling is intact and the caudal notochord is able to induce ectopic MNs when grafted laterally to a host neural tube.