Figure 2.

Therapeutic strategies for PD. Boosting autophagic/lysosomal clearance is a potential avenue for clearing α-syn and other aggregating proteins that disrupt cellular homeostasis. Reducing SNCA mRNA by modulating histone deacetylase (HDACs) or through RNA interference (RNAi) strategies can potentially lead to a decrease in expression of α-syn which is known to result in reduced aggregation and toxicity. Reducing aggregation can be achieved by impeding the multimerization of α-syn through heat shock proteins (HSPs) for example, or by dissociating existing aggregates with small molecules. Blocking α-syn entry through receptor blocking would directly target the spread of α-syn and prevent its transport from cell to cell. Finally, immunotherapy could potentially neutralize α-syn and/or α-syn aggregates extracellularly and perhaps even intracellularly in the case of intra/nanobodies.