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Updated: Jun 18, 2026

A Method to Study α-Synuclein Toxicity and Aggregation Using a Humanized Yeast Model
Published on: November 25, 2022
Biomimetically Engineered Amyloid-Shelled Gold Nanocomplexes for Discovering α-Synuclein Oligomer-Degrading Drugs
Dongtak Lee1, Hyo Gi Jung1,2, Dongsung Park1,3
1School of Biomedical Engineering, Korea University, Seoul02841, South Korea.
Abstract:
The assembly of α-synuclein (αS) oligomers is recognized as the main pathological driver of synucleinopathies. While the elimination of toxic αS oligomers shows promise for the treatment of Parkinson's disease (PD), the discovery of αS oligomer degradation drugs has been hindered by the lack of proper drug screening tools. Here, we report a drug screening platform for monitoring the efficacy of αS-oligomer-degrading drugs using amyloid-shelled gold nanocomplexes (ASGNs). We fabricate ASGNs in the presence of dopamine, mimicking the in vivo generation process of pathological αS oligomers. To test our platform, the first of its kind for PD drugs, we use αS-degrading proteases and various small molecular substances that have shown efficacy in PD treatment. We demonstrate that the ASGN-based in vitro platform has strong potential to discover effective αS-oligomer-targeting drugs, and thus it may reduce the attrition problem in drug discovery for PD treatment.

