By Express News Service THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology (SCTIMST) in Thiruvananthapuram, has been selected as the lead nodal centre in the country for an Indo-German collaborative research proposal - Genetic Architecture of Parkinson’s Disease (PD). The project was pitched by Manu Sharma from the University of Tubingen, Germany, and Asha Kishore, movement disorders specialist and director of SCTIMST. For carrying out the project, the Michel J Fox Foundation, USA, has given a grant of USD 2.3 million to the Centre for Movement Disorders in SCTIMST and to the Centre for Genetic Epidemiology in University of Tubingen. “A consortium of movement disorder specialists, neurologists, and geneticists from 20 Indian centres are co-investigators in the multi-centre international study along with the team in Germany led by Manu Sharma. This will be the first Genome-Wide Association Study (GWAS) on PD in India,” read an excerpt of the statement from the institute. Besides SCTIMST, AIIMS New Delhi, NIMHANS Bangalore and Nizams Institute of Medical Sciences, Hyderabad, will be nodal centres. Other than that, there will be 16 sub-centres. “This research aims to identify genetic risk factors of PD in India through GWAS. Approximately half a million genetic markers will be assessed to identify the Indian PD population-specific risk variants. To meet the objectives, more than 10,000 PD patients and 10,000 healthy controls will be recruited from across India to define a pan-Indian PD map,” said SCTIMST.

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