Manolo Carta

My research is focused on the understanding of the mechanisms involved in the appearance of dyskinesia in Parkinson's disease. In the recent years, we contributed to unveil the role of the serotonergic system in the appearance of L-DOPA-induced dyskinesia. Our pre-clinical work has later been corroborated by clinical studies in PD patients. Recent work has been focused on the understanding of the possible role of neurosteroids as modulator of the dopamine function. Indeed, pharmacological targeting of a key enzyme in the neurosteroid pathway has been shown to produce significant antidyskinetic effect in the rat model of PD. Recently, we have also extend our interest to the rat model of alpha-synuclein overepression, in the attempt to investigate possible early biomarkers of PD.