IT IS THE moment rock fans thought would never happen. On July 4th Oasis, the greatest British band of their generation, will go on stage for the first time in 16 years. Such a thing seemed impossible given the group’s spectacular combustion in 2009, after a fight between Liam Gallagher, the lead singer, and his brother, Noel, the main songwriter. In the intervening years the siblings fired shots at each other in the press and on social media. (Noel famously described Liam as “the angriest man you’ll ever meet. He’s like a man with a fork in a world of soup.”) But now, they claim, “The guns have fallen silent.”
When Julia Roberts gets in Richard Gere’s Lotus Esprit as it stutters along Hollywood Boulevard in the 1990 film Pretty Woman, Germans heard Daniela Hoffmann, not Roberts, exclaim: “Man, this baby must corner like it’s on rails!” In Spain, Mercè Montalà voiced the line, while French audiences heard it from Céline Monsarrat. In the years that followed, Hollywood’s sweetheart would sound different in cinemas around the world but to native audiences she would sound the same.
The voice actors would gain some notoriety in their home countries, but today, their jobs are being threatened by artificial intelligence. The use of AI was a major point of dispute during the Hollywood actors’ strike in 2023, when both writers and actors expressed concern that it could undermine their roles, and fought for federal legislation to protect their work. Not long after, more than 20 voice acting guilds, associations and unions formed the United Voice Artists coalition to campaign under the slogan “Don’t steal our voices”. In Germany, home to “the Oscars of dubbing”, artists warned that their jobs were at risk with the rise of films dubbed with AI trained using their voices, without their consent.
“It’s war for us,” says Patrick Kuban, a voice actor and organiser with the dubbing union Voix Off, who along with the French Union of Performing Artists started the campaign #TouchePasMaVF (“don’t touch my French version”). They want to see dubbing added to France’s l’exception culturelle, a government policy that defines cultural goods as part of national identity and needing special protection from the state.
Dubbing isn’t just a case of translating a film into native languages, explains Kuban, it’s adapted “to the French humour, to include references, culture and emotion”. As a result, AI could put an estimated 12,500 jobs at risk in France: including writers, translators, sound engineers, as well as the voice actors themselves, according to a study by the Audiens Group in 2023.
‘I don’t want my voice to be used to say whatever someone wants’ … a voiceover artist in a recording studio. Photograph: Edward Olive/Getty Images
“Humans are able to bring to [these roles]: experience, trauma and emotion, context and background and relationships,” adds Tim Friedlander, a US-based voice actor, studio owner, musician, and president of the National Association of Voice Actors. “All of the things that we as humans connect with. You can have a voice that sounds angry, but if it doesn’t feel angry, you’re going to have a disconnect in there.”
Since the introduction of sound cinema in the late 1920s and 1930s, dubbing has grown to be an industry worth more than $4.04bn (£2.96bn) globally. It was first adopted in Europe by authoritarian leaders, who wanted to remove negative references to their governments and promote their languages. Mussolini banned foreign languages in movies entirely, a policy that catalysed a preference for dubbed rather than subtitled films in the country. Today, 61% of German viewers and 54% of French ones also opt for dubbed movies, while Disney dubs their productions into more than 46 languages. But with the development of AI, who profits from dubbing could soon change.
Earlier this year, the UK-based startup ElevenLabs announced plans to clone the voice of Alain Dorval – the “voix de Stallone”, who from the 1970s onwards gave voice to Sylvester Stallone in some 30 films – in a new thriller, Armor, on Amazon. At the time, contracts did not state how an actor’s voice could be re-used: including to train AI software and create synthetic voices that ultimately could replace voice actors entirely. “It’s a kind of monster,” says Kuban. “If we don’t have protection, all kinds of jobs will be lost: after the movie industry, it will be the media industry, the music industry, all the cultural industries, and a society without culture will not be very good.”
When ChatGPT and ElevenLabs hit the market at the start of 2022, making AI a public-facing technology, “it was a theoretical threat, but not an immediate threat”, says Friedlander. But as the market has grown, including the release of the Israeli startup Deepdub, an AI-powered platform that offers dubbing and voiceover services for films, the problems with synthetic voice technologies have become impossible to ignore.
“If you steal my voice, you are stealing my identity,” says Daniele Giuliani, who voiced Jon Snow in the Game of Thrones, and works as a dubbing director. He is the president of the Italian dubbers’ association, ANAD, which recently fought for AI clauses in national contracts to protect voice actors from the indiscriminate and unauthorised use of their voices, and to prohibit the use of those voices in machine learning and deep data mining – a proposal that’s being used as a model in Spain. “This is very serious. I don’t want my voice to be used to say whatever someone wants.”
AI’s tentacles have had a global reach too. In India, where 72% of viewers prefer watching content in a different language, Sanket Mhatre, who voices Ryan Reynolds in the 2011 superhero film Green Lantern is concerned: “We’ve been signing contracts for donkey’s years now and most of these contracts have really big language about your voice being used in all perpetuity anywhere in the world,” says Mhatre. “Now with AI, signing something like this is essentially just signing away your career.”
Mhatre dubs more than 70-100 Hollywood movies into Hindi each year, as well as Chinese, Spanish, French films; web series, animated shows, anime, documentaries and audiobooks. “Every single day, I retell stories from some part of the world for the people of my country in their language, in their voice. It’s special,” he says. “It’s such an inclusive exercise. In India, if you’re not somebody who speaks English, it’s very easy to be knocked down and feel inferior. But when you are able to dub this cinema into Hindi, people now understand that cinema and can discuss it.”
He’s noticed a decline in the number of jobs dubbing corporate copy, training videos, and other quick turnaround information-led items, but he thinks his job is safe at the moment as it’s impossible for AI to adapt to cultural nuances or act with human emotion. “If the actor’s face is not visible on screen, or if you’re just seeing their back, in India, we might attempt to add an expression or a line to clarify the scene or provide more context.” When there are references to time travel movies in a sci-fi film, he explains, a dubber might list Bollywood titles instead.
But as AI learns more from voice actors and other humans, Mhatre is aware that it is a whole lot quicker and cheaper for companies to adopt this technology rather than hire dubbing actors, translators, and sound engineers.
“We need to stand against the robots,” says Kuban. “We need to use them for peaceful things, for maybe climate change or things like that, but we need to have actors on the screen.”
Food-safe development by researchers in Ljubljana, Slovenia, could monitor and verify products.
Researchers at the Jožef Stefan Institute in Ljubljana, Slovenia, have demonstrated what they call “edible microlasers” — tiny lasers made entirely from food-safe materials—that can be used for food monitoring, product authentication and tagging.
These edible microlasers are composed of droplets of oil or water–glycerol mixtures doped with natural optical gain substances, such as chlorophyll (the green pigment in leaves) or riboflavin (vitamin B2).
Researchers have shown that olive oil already contains enough chlorophyll to be used directly as a laser in the form of droplets without the need for additional ingredients. They can be excited using external light, such as a pulsed laser. The research is described in Advanced Optical Materials.
Edible microlasers can be realized in different configurations, including whispering gallery modes, in which light circulates inside a droplet, and Fabry–Pérot cavities, in which light reflects back and forth between two surfaces. Their emission properties can be tuned by varying the cavity size or the surrounding conditions, such as the refractive index of the medium.
Due to their highly sensitive output emission, microlasers can serve both as optical barcodes and sensors. For example, researchers have encoded a date into a peach compote using microlaser barcodes embedded inside the food. The barcode remained optically stable and readable for over a year. In other experiments, edible microlasers have been designed to respond to changes in pH, temperature, sugar concentration, and microbial growth, offering a platform for real-time food freshness sensing.
Food-safe
Importantly, according to the researchers, these microlasers do not alter the nutritional value or taste of the food and are suitable for vegetarians. This approach combines photonics and food science in a novel, biocompatible way that could reduce food waste, detect counterfeits, and improve food quality control.
Beyond the food industry, this edible laser technology may also find applications in pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, agriculture, and other fields where biocompatible, ingestible barcodes and sensors are valuable.
Abdur Rehman Anwar, Dr. Maruša Mur, and Dr. Matjaž Humar are physicists working in the Lab for biophotonics, soft photonics and quantum optics at the Jožef Stefan Institute. Anwar, a young researcher, holds a master’s degree from Pakistan, where he worked on LEDs. He is currently focused on developing microlaser-based barcodes and sensors.
Dr. Maruša Mur is a postdoctoral researcher whose PhD research focused on photonic microdevices and topological defects in liquid crystals. Her current work explores bio-integrated photonics and embedding microdevices in biological systems. Dr. Matjaž Humar leads the lab and holds a PhD in optical microresonators. A former postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School, he pioneered intracellular lasers. He is the recipient of two ERC and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowships.
Romero Games has announced the cancellation of its upcoming first-person shooter due to its publisher cancelling funding for the game.
Studio director Brenda Romero shared on social media that it was a “strategic decision made at a high level within the publisher” that was “way above our visibility or control”.
“Last night, we learned that our publisher has cancelled funding our game along with several other unannounced projects at other studios,” Romero wrote. “We deeply wish there had been something, anything, we could have done to prevent this outcome.”
She continued: “This absolutely isn’t a reflection of our team’s work, performance, or the quality of the project itself. We hit every milestone on time, every time, consistently received high praise, and easily passed all our internal gates. We are incredibly proud of the work being done, and the talented team behind it. The best we’ve worked with.”
As a result, an unknown number of employees have been let go from the studio.
“We’re currently evaluating next steps and working quickly to support our team,” Romero added. “Many of us have worked together for more than a decade, some for over 20 years. It’s an extremely difficult day, and we’re heartbroken that it’s come to this.
“If you know of any opportunities or ways you can help our incredible team, please reach out. Thank you to everyone who’s offered support and kindness and encouragement during this difficult time.”
A former employee suggested that the decision to cancel this unannounced project, and the subsequent layoffs, was made due to the Microsoft layoffs announced yesterday.
As a result of the layoffs, which affected around 9,000 employees according to CNBC, Xbox closed The Initiative, cancelled Perfect Dark, Everwild, and Zenimax Online Studios’ MMO, codenamed Blackbird.
Almost 50% of employees at Forza Motorsports creator Turn 10 were let go, and Call of Duty studio Raven Software were also affected.
GamesIndustry.biz will keep its coverage of the Xbox layoffs updated as more information about which studios or part of the division are affected.
Even the world’s best tennis players aren’t immune to getting star struck.
World No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka said she made her best efforts not to cast her eyes towards a star-studded Royal Box on Wednesday at Wimbledon, which included A-listers like singer Olivia Rodrigo, professional wrestler John Cena, Foo Fighters musician Dave Grohl, and actress Priyanka Chopra Jonas and her husband, singer Nick Jonas.
“I was trying not to look today,” she told reporters after a 7-6(5), 6-4 win over Marie Bouzkova to reach the third round.
“I’m really glad that I wasn’t looking there, I would be like this the whole match,” she continued, doing her best impression of the heart-eyes emoji. “I was just trying to focus on my game. Later on I’m going to open the social media, be, ‘OK, who was there?’”
Another thing that the top seed has avoided in the early days at Wimbledon? Losing. The other four Top 5 seeds all were beaten in the first two rounds — a first since 2018 — and she was two points away from dropping the first set against Bouzkova three different times in the first set before coming through.
Afterwards in her Centre Court interview, Sabalenka said she has been keenly aware of what’s been going on around her.
“I hope it’s no upsets anymore in this tournament, if you know what I mean,” she quipped, alluding to the fact that any loss by the player who holds the top ranking is considered an upset on paper.
“I’m just trying to focus on myself,” Sabalenka added in her press conference. “Of course, I know about all of these upsets. I think it’s really important to focus on yourself and to take it one step at a time, do not really look at the draw. This is something what can create a lot of nerves and a lot of doubts and stuff.
“I’m just trying to take it one step at a time. As I said earlier, I know if I’m focused, if I’m there, if I’m fighting, I know I’m going to have my chance in each match. I’m just trying to take it one step at a time.”
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Thu Jul 03 14:52:25 CEST 2025Press Release
+++ 36th BMW International Open underway at Golfclub München Eichenried +++ Marco Penge (ENG, -5) clubhouse leader +++ Best German so far: Marcel Schneider (-2) +++ Images from the morning flights +++
+++ 36th BMW International Open underway at Golfclub
München Eichenried +++ Marco Penge (ENG, -5) clubhouse leader +++ Best
German so far: Marcel Schneider (-2) +++ Images from the morning
flights +++
Munich. The morning starters at the BMW International
Open (2–6 July 2025, GC München Eichenried) have completed their first
round. The initial clubhouse leader is Marco Penge at five under par.
The Englishman made a double bogey on the 18th hole (par
5), missing out on an even better result. Overall, scores were not as
low as expected prior to the tournament. Marcel Schneider is currently
the best-placed German in the clubhouse at two under par. The German
trio Martin Kaymer, Marcel Siem, and Nicolai von Dellingshausen, as
well as Luke Donald (ENG) and Patrick Reed (USA), will tee off in the
afternoon at Germany’s only DP World Tour event.
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Fuel consumption, CO2 emission figures and power consumption and range were measured using the methods required according to Regulation VO (EC) 2007/715 as amended. They refer to vehicles on the German automotive market. For ranges, the NEDC figures take into account differences in the selected wheel and tyre size, while the WLTP figures take into account the effects of any optional equipment.
All figures have already been calculated based on the new WLTP test cycle. NEDC figures listed have been adjusted to the NEDC measurement method where applicable. WLTP values are used as a basis for the assessment of taxes and other vehicle-related duties which are (also) based on CO2 emissions and, where applicable, for the purposes of vehicle-specific subsidies. Further information are available at www.bmw.de/wltp and at www.dat.de/co2/.
Some of the biggest questions in planetary science are written across the dusty surface of Mars. Why did a planet that once had flowing rivers and lakes end up as a frozen desert? How did Mars lose its grip on liquid water – and what does that say about a planet’s ability to stay habitable?
A new study may bring us closer to an answer. Scientists from the University of Chicago have proposed a new model that explains why Mars couldn’t hold on to its early climate.
The mystery of Mars’ climate
The team suggests that Mars had short bursts of warmth triggered by gradual changes in sunlight. But each time conditions improved, the planet pushed itself right back into a deep freeze. That’s very different from Earth, which has stayed habitable for billions of years.
“For years, we’ve had this huge unanswered question for why Earth has managed to keep its habitability while Mars lost it,” said Edwin Kite, a participating scientist on NASA’s Curiosity rover and associate professor at the University of Chicago.
“Our models suggest that periods of habitability on Mars have been the exception, rather than the rule, and that Mars generally self-regulates as a desert planet.”
The case of the missing carbon
Curiosity’s recent discovery of carbonate-rich rocks on Mars helped make this new theory possible. These minerals were the missing link in a puzzle scientists have been trying to solve for years.
If Mars once had a thick, carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere – enough to warm the planet and allow water to flow – where did all that carbon go? “People have been looking for a tomb for the atmosphere for years,” Kite said.
Scientists had suspected that, like Earth, Mars might lock away carbon dioxide in its rocks through chemical reactions with water. But early tests by Mars rovers failed to find those carbonate deposits.
That changed when Curiosity reached higher elevations on Mt. Sharp and finally hit the carbonate-rich layers they’d been hoping to find.
“It really is something you cannot know until you have a rover on the surface,” said study co-author Benjamin Tutolo, a professor at the University of Calgary.
“The chemistry and mineralogy measurements they provide really are essential in our continuing quest to understand how and why planets stay habitable, in order to search for other hospitable worlds out in the universe.”
Mars’ climate cycle worked against life
Mars and Earth started out with a lot in common. Both are rocky planets. Both have water and carbon. Both are at a decent distance from the Sun. Yet only one has remained friendly to life.
The new study explains how small differences added up over time. Earth has a built-in thermostat: carbon cycles from the atmosphere into rocks and back again through volcanic activity.
When Earth heats up, reactions pull carbon dioxide out of the air, cooling things down. Then volcanoes push it back out again, preventing a deep freeze. On Mars, that cycle doesn’t work the same way.
“In contrast to Earth, where there are always some volcanoes erupting, Mars right now is volcanically dormant, and the average rate of volcanic outgassing on Mars is slow,” Kite said.
“So in that situation, you don’t really have a balance between carbon dioxide in and carbon dioxide out, because if you have even a little bit of liquid water, you’re going to draw down carbon dioxide through carbonate formation.”
The role of carbon in Mars’ climate
The carbon imbalance means any brief warming on Mars – such as from a slowly brightening sun – triggers its own undoing. Water reappears. It helps form carbonates. That pulls carbon out of the air. Then the greenhouse effect fades, and Mars cools off again.
The models show Mars could have had warm, wet periods lasting a few million years, followed by dry spells that lasted 100 million years or more. That kind of stop-start habitability, with massive gaps in between, isn’t great for sustaining life.
Traces of environmental catastrophe
Between Curiosity, Perseverance, and the fleet of orbiters circling the planet, we’re finally piecing together a real history of what happened to Mars’ climate.
“Fortunately, Mars preserves a trace of that environmental catastrophe in the rocks on its surface,” said Kite. “And today we’re in a golden age of Mars science, with two plutonium-powered rovers on the surface and an international fleet of spacecraft in orbit that allow us to deeply explore the planet for these traces.”
The more we understand about how Mars lost its atmosphere, the more we can learn about what keeps a planet stable – and what makes it fragile.
The full study was published in the journal Nature.
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The US economy added 147,000 jobs in June, a sign of continuing strength in the labor market amid Donald Trump’s trade war.
The number of jobs added surpassed expectations, as economists largely anticipated a drop in openings. Instead, 8,000 more jobs were added in June compared with May, according to new job figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The unemployment rate actually decreased to 4.1%, down from 4.2% in May.
Job gains were seen in state government and healthcare, which saw increases of 47,000 and 39,000 jobs, respectively. Meanwhile, federal government job losses continued, with another 7,000 roles down in May, as the Trump administration continues to cut jobs. The total job loss in the federal government has been 69,000 since January.
Though the president’s tariffs have rocked the US stock market, which has seen a dramatic rebound after dipping down 15% in the spring, economists have been worrying that the labor market has just been slower to show sensitivity to the tariffs.
New data had shown employers showing signs of hesitancy. Payroll firm ADP found that the private sector lost 33,000 jobs in June, far below the 100,000 increase that was expected, and the first decrease since March 2023.
The dip in job openings doesn’t necessarily mean companies are laying off more workers; rather, they are creating fewer new positions.
“Though layoffs continue to be rare, a hesitancy to hire and a reluctance to replace departing workers led to job losses last month,” said Nela Richardson, chief economist at ADP, in a statement.
Data from BLS that measures job openings and turnovers in the labor market found that while job openings had climbed in May, to its highest level since November, the vast majority of openings were concentrated in the leisure and hospitality industry. Economists with Citigroup said the spike in new jobs could be temporary as companies opened new positions in response to Trump’s crackdown on immigrants, fearing that immigrant employees could lose work permits.
The White House has spent the last few months downplaying the impact tariffs have on the domestic economy, despite anxiety from both consumers and businesses over the impact tariffs have on prices.
The deadline for Trump’s 90-day pause on some of his highest tariffs is scheduled to expire next week, as the White House tries to broker deals with dozens of countries that could face high tariffs.
The White House announced on Tuesday a deal with Vietnam, whose products were scheduled to face a 46% tariff. The country agreed to a 20% tariff rate, with no tariffs placed on US exports. The deal with Vietnam follows deals Trump has made with the UK and China, but there are dozens of other countries whose exports could face high tariffs without a deal.
Amid economic uncertainty, Trump has tried to pass blame onto the Federal Reserve and its chair, Jerome Powell. On Monday, Trump sent an open letter to Powell demanding that the Fed lower interest rates.
“He’s costing us a fortune because he keeps the rate way up,” Trump wrote on social media.
Powell, in turn, has said that the Fed has not lowered interest rates because of economic uncertainty caused by Trump’s tariffs.
“In effect, we went on hold when we saw the size of the tariffs,” Powell said. “Essentially all inflation forecasts for the United States went up materially as a consequence of the tariffs.”
A remarkable documentary is providing insight into the propaganda found within Russian schools. Mr. Nobody Against Putin, directed by David Borenstein, premiered at the 2025 Sundance film festival in January, where it won the world cinema documentary special jury award.
The film was recorded over two years by Pavel “Pasha” Talankin, an events coordinator and videographer at a high school in Karabash, a heavily polluted town in central southern Russia. The documentary records the intensification of Kremlin-directed ultra-nationalist and pro-war propaganda within the Russian schooling system, which has intensified since the escalation of the war against Ukraine in February 2022.
Talankin makes clear his view that this approach to “education” represents a moral wrong, and he is very much on point with the writings of the key ethicists on the subject. American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, for example, wrote that “education is both a tool of propaganda in the hands of dominant groups, and a means of emancipation for subject classes”.
Niebhur was writing about the education system in the US during the 1920s, when there was a widespread understanding that propaganda was used in these two ways. Talankin’s concern is that Russia has moved to a position of imbalance, where the “dominant groups” have too much influence and are using their power to corrupt the minds of children through disingenuous narratives about national servitude, sacrifice and conformity, coupled with the unsubtle threat that those who are not patriots are “parasites”.
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In their highly respected book Propaganda & Persuasion (1986), propaganda experts Garth Jowett and Victoria O’Donnell state that “to analyse propaganda, one needs to be able to identify it”. This is a difficult task because propaganda thrives through symbols, the subliminal and in fictional works precisely because the audience is not conscious of it.
However, the creation of an environment that uses propaganda is also depends on who is given the oxygen of publicity and who is marginalised. These are the conditions under which ideological indoctrination occurs and power is achieved or maintained.
As such, a critical analyst of propaganda must assess the linguistic strategy, the information strategy, the eminence strategy (how to ensure that the target audience are watching, reading or listening to the desired content) and the staging strategy of the communicator. This can be remembered through the helpful L.I.E.S. mnemonic.
The trailer for Mr. Nobody versus Putin.
Talankin’s footage shows how Russian schools now promote distorted versions of European history. The well-trodden narrative that Ukraine has been taken over by neo-Nazis is referred to several times in lessons. Russian flags appear with greater frequency around the school as time goes on, and assembly time becomes an exercise in pledging allegiance to the fatherland.
Teachers are expected to read from scripts prepared for them by the ministry of education. Pupils then respond with choreographed answers – some even glancing down at notes under their desks. The children are told about how dreadful life in France and the UK is because of their reliance on Russian fossil fuels.
Interestingly, the Kremlin has asked that all of this be videoed and uploaded to a central database to ensure compliance with national regulations on what is taught in schools. Indeed, Talankin complains at one point that much of his time is now spent uploading the videos rather than actually teaching the students and helping them to be creative – as his job previously was.
Shared humanity
Talankin takes us on a tour of his city. He shows a pro-war rally that is broadly supported by the townsfolk. Or at least those in opposition dare not say anything or engage in an equivalent demonstration. He takes us to the civic library, theoretically a site of independent learning but which has been hijacked by these propaganda efforts.
Perhaps the most important moments of the documentary though are the snippets of critique and the sense of “knowing” that Talankin is keen to show. The young girl who jokingly tells her teacher to “blink twice if you’re lying”, and to which all her class then laugh. His interactions with other teachers who confide in him that they know that the propaganda is bullshit, but, worried for their status and prosperity, go along with it.
The propaganda is pretty poor though. It is clunky and obvious, and, while it might generate some short-term influence, it smacks of both arrogance and desperation on the part of the Kremlin. Indeed, it shows that there is no desire on the part of central government for Russian people to thrive intellectually.
Pavel Talankin was a school videographer in Russia. Courtesy of Pavel Talankin
This scenario is reminiscent of the end of the Soviet era, when communist propaganda continued to prevail, but few still believed it. Nevertheless, without a clear alternative to follow, or obvious alternative leader to guide them, most people continued to abide.
The most harrowing part of the documentary comes towards the end when Talankin provides an audio recording of the funeral of a local lad who has been killed in Ukraine. He did not dare film the funeral as this is a cultural faux pas, but the screams and wails of the mother as her son is laid to rest are piercing. The scene seems intended to bring our shared humanity to bare.
Talankin is a nice guy with intelligence and ethical fortitude. The kids are funny, charming and talented. The mother is doing what we would all do if we had lost a child to a violent death. As such, Mr. Nobody Against Putin might better be called Mr. Everybody Against Putin, as should be of grave concern to everyone that Russia’s education system is resorting to such techniques.
Scientists at the University of Sydney have discovered a malfunctioning brain protein linked to Parkinson’s – which could lead to new therapies for the debilitating condition in the future.
New research from the University of Sydney has uncovered a key brain protein involved in the development of Parkinson’s disease, and identified a way to modify it, offering hope for future treatments.
Led by Professor Kay Double at the Brain and Mind Centre, the team has spent over a decade investigating the biological mechanisms that drive Parkinson’s. The condition affects more than 10 million people worldwide and is the second most common neurological disorder after dementia.
From discovery to breakthrough
In 2017, Professor Double’s team published a study identifying the abnormal presence of a protein called SOD1 in the brains of people with Parkinson’s. While SOD1 normally serves a protective function in the brain, in Parkinson’s patients it becomes faulty, clumping together and damaging neurons.
Building on this, the latest study, published in Acta Neuropathologica Communications, has shown that targeting this malfunctioning protein can dramatically improve motor function in animal models.
“All the mice we treated saw a dramatic improvement in their motor skills which is a really promising sign it could be effective in treating people who have Parkinson disease too,” said Professor Double. “We hoped that by treating this malfunctioning protein, we might be able to improve the Parkinson-like symptoms in the mice we were treating – but even we were astonished by the success of the intervention.”
Treating the protein with copper
The study involved two groups of mice bred to show Parkinson’s-like symptoms. One group was treated for three months with a special copper supplement, while the other received a placebo.
The results showed that mice in the placebo group continued to experience worsening motor symptoms
The results showed that mice in the placebo group continued to experience worsening motor symptoms. However, the mice treated with the copper supplement were protected from these effects and retained normal movement.
“The results were beyond our expectations and suggest, once further studies are carried out, this treatment approach could slow the progression of Parkinson’s disease in humans,” Professor Double said.
Understanding Parkinson’s disease
Parkinson’s disease occurs when dopamine-producing cells in the brain die off, resulting in tremors, stiffness, slow movements and poor balance. While the exact causes remain unclear, this research strengthens the case that the faulty SOD1 protein is a key player in its progression.
“As our understanding of Parkinson’s disease grows, we are finding that there are many factors contributing to its development and progression in humans – and faulty forms of the SOD1 protein is likely one of them,” said Professor Double.
Toward multi-faceted treatments
The findings also point to the need for combination therapies, echoing lessons from other complex diseases.
“Just as researchers found with HIV, Parkinson’s disease is a complex condition that likely requires multiple interventions. A single treatment may have a small effect when used alone but, when combined with other interventions, contributes to a significant overall improvement in health,” Professor Double added.
What’s next?
The team’s next goal is to determine how best to target the faulty SOD1 protein in human clinical trials. If successful, it could be the beginning of a new class of treatments aimed at slowing – or even halting – the progression of Parkinson’s disease.
Related topics Animal Models, Central Nervous System (CNS), Drug Discovery, Drug Discovery Processes, Neurons, Neuroprotection, Neurosciences, Protein, Targets, Therapeutics, Translational Science
