Modeling Parkinson's Disease in Primates

Decades of research have identified the pathological and pathophysiological hallmarks of Parkinson's disease (PD): profound deficit in brain dopamine and other monoamines, pathological α-synuclein aggregation, synaptic and neuronal network dysfunction, aberrant proteostasis, altered energy homeostasis, inflammation, and neuronal cell death. The purpose of this contribution is to present the phenocopy aspect, pathogenic, and etiologic nonhuman primate (NHP) models of PD to readers with limited prior knowledge of PD so that they are ready to start working on PD. How NHPs, the closest species to man on which we can model diseases, contribute to the knowledge progress and how these models represent an invaluable translational step in therapeutic development are highlighted.