Tailoring a stem cell treatment to Parkinson’s disease patients

Quebec, Eunice Linh You, 17, Grade 11, Laval Liberty High School

As a kid, Eunice Linh You says, she was “always the curious type who asked too many ‘whys’ — why is the grass green? Why is the water wet?”

No longer a kid, that same curiosity still drives her but the questions have changed. Now she’s looking for an answer to Parkinson’s Disease.

Eunice, 17, a Grade 11 student at Laval Liberty High School, in Laval, Quebec, is this year’s winner of the Quebec regional “Sanofi BioGenius Challenge Canada” (SBCC).

She named her project “Shake hands over cures, not Parkinson’s Disease,” an illness she took an interest in last year. Working on another project involving pesticides, she learned of a link between pesticide exposure and Parkinson’s.

Her school connected her to Liam Crapper, a doctoral candidate at the McGill University’s Psychiatric Genetics Group, a mentor Eunice calls “amazing.”

Parkinson’s, which affects around 5 million people worldwide, is caused by a degeneration of dopamine-producing brain cells. Since the 1950s, the main treatment has involved drugs that can slow the development of symptomatic tremors, muscle rigidity, slow movement, and cognitive and neurobehavioral problems.

Much research in recent years has gone into replacing degenerating brain cells with stem cells engineered to take over dopamine production. Despite progress, clinical trials have produced sketchy, uneven results.

Eunice devoted her research to improving the fit of transplanted stem cells to the patient, testing whether the introduction of growth stimulants at a later stage in the engineering process could produce better results.

Eunice is still excited working and learning new techniques in a real lab — and by the results.

“With a microscope you can actually see the way the cells form these neuron-rich patches with these long axons (nerve fibers) — that’s what dopamine-producing neurons look like.”

Her work has advanced the yardsticks of science and she still hasn’t come down from the thrill of winning the Quebec SBCC.

And she looks forward to continuing the study while planning a career in biotechnology.

“The panel of judges gave me really good feedback and I will be guided by that as I finish up my project.”