MPTP
CompoundWikipedia
10
MENTIONS
6
EPISODES
6
PODCASTS
Search complete. 10 mentions across 6 episodes found for "MPTP".
Sep 8, 2026
Jeffrey KordowerGUEST
And so the models that were developed were six hydroxy dopamine lesions in rodents.
Jeffrey KordowerGUEST
And eventually, once the discovery of MPTP in non-human primates, MPTP became the model.
Jeffrey KordowerGUEST
But these models, we now know that Parkinson's disease is by rule a copathology disease.
Jeffrey KordowerGUEST
There are lots of things that are wrong in the brains of patients with Parkinson's disease.
Kirstie LawtonGUEST
Where this all started, actually, this link between environmental factors and Parkinson's, in 1982, a woman turned up at an, an ER, an A&E in California, and she had what appeared to be end-stage Parkinson's symptoms that had come on acutely.
Kirstie LawtonGUEST
And no one knew what was wrong with her, and so investigations took place, and she had taken heroin, and the heroin was laced with something called MPTP, which is a, a, a toxin, a poison, and that converts to something called MPP, and it damages the substantia nigra.
Kirstie LawtonGUEST
So from the early '80s, people were saying, "Okay, there might be an environmental link here." In the '90s, the pesticide Rotenone was being looked at, and particularly in mouse studies, demonstrating that, like, a long-term exposure at low levels could lead to Parkinson's.
Kirstie LawtonGUEST
There's also been research considering prevalence in certain populations.
David PerlmutterGUEST
As you discussed in your interview of, of Dr. Dorsey, he's really, uh, very much, uh, fixated on this trichloroethylene, uh, which had been used as industrial cleaner, uh, dry cleaning fluid, makes its way into, into water, you know, and p- and there are places where groundwater is still contaminated by TCE.
David PerlmutterGUEST
And, you know, in my, in my lecturing, I've opened up this discussion a little bit further, uh, looking at first something I, I alluded to earlier, this MPTP contaminant of, uh, this IV drug that people were using in the '80s and getting Parkinson's because MPTP targets the mitochondria.
David PerlmutterGUEST
Well, are there any mitochondrial toxins that we may be exposed to these days? And the answer is you bet there are.
David PerlmutterGUEST
Let's talk about something called paraquat.
David PerlmutterGUEST
And within a few weeks, more patients came in, same thing.
David PerlmutterGUEST
And so what he determined, interesting story, is that these people were all IV drug abusers and they bought a drug on the street from one source that was contaminated with something called MPTP.
David PerlmutterGUEST
And what is MPTP? So it's a mitochondrial toxin.
David PerlmutterGUEST
And 13 years later, one of these patients died and Dr. Langston had the ability to, an opportunity to examine the brain.
David PerlmutterGUEST
And what he found was, this sets the stage for everything, it's incredible, that the MPTP had caused the microglial cells in a particular part of the brain, the substantia nigra that makes the dopamine, It caused the microglial cells to digest away those neurons so they couldn't make dopamine anymore and they were still acting 13 years later from the one exposure.
David PerlmutterGUEST
And that set the stage for using MPTP as a research tool but for us to understand the role of the brain's immune system in brain degeneration.
Max LugavereHOST
Wow,
David PerlmutterGUEST
pretty cool story.
David PerlmutterGUEST
Amazing story.
David PerlmutterGUEST
When he had all these drug addicts came in, they, the, a drug that was contaminated with something that was a mitochondrial toxin called MPTP.
David PerlmutterGUEST
I'm going off story.
David PerlmutterGUEST
But here's-- Let's get back to the study 'cause it's fascinating.
Deborah Cory-SlechtaGUEST
the laboratory was because it had a structural similarity.
Deborah Cory-SlechtaGUEST
It's a chemical that looked an awful lot like something called MPTP.
Deborah Cory-SlechtaGUEST
Well, in the world of Parkinson's disease, MPTP was a chemical that got synthesized and was found to produce Parkinson's disease in 20-year-olds in California and somebody recognized that, wow, this looks a lot like a paraquat.
Deborah Cory-SlechtaGUEST
The person who did that was actually somebody working on frogs.
Deborah Cory-SlechtaGUEST
And so, you know, normally that's not data that I would see, but it came to light and it started to generate a lot of interest and people started looking at it.