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MARYKA QUIK PhD, Professor and Senior Research Scientist. Dr. Quik received her PhD in Biochemistry from McGill University in Montreal, Canada. After a Medical Research Council postdoctoral fellowship at Cambridge University in England, she joined the faculty in the Department of Pharmacology at McGill University as assistant professor. She continued her career in research and teaching as a full professor in Pharmacology at McGill until 1996, when she joined the Parkinson's Institute. Dr. Quik has published over 120 research articles and reviews.
Dr. Quik’s research focuses on the relationship between the nicotinic cholinergic system and the dopaminergic system in Parkinson’s disease. Parkinson’s disease is a fairly common neurological disorder that occurs in ~1% of the population over 60 years of age. It is characterized by a loss of dopaminergic neurons in the nigrostriatal pathway that results in severe motor problems. The rationale for investigating the nicotinic cholinergic system in Parkinson's disease stems from evidence showing that there is extensive overlap between the nicotinic and dopaminergic system in the striatum, that nicotinic receptors are present in striatum, and that nicotine stimulates dopamine activity in the striatum. These functional changes are of relevance to Parkinson's disease as accumulating studies show that nicotine protects against nigrostriatal damage in experimental animals models. Experiments are in progress in Dr. Quik’s laboratory to understand the mechanisms responsible for nicotine’s protective effects against degeneration of dopamine neurons both in cultured cells and in vivo. Studies are also in progress to investigate whether nicotine may be useful for treating movement problems associated with L-dopa-therapy in Parkinson's disease. Studies from Dr. Quik’s laboratory show that nicotine reduces L-dopa-induced abnormal involuntary movements in different parkinsonian animal models by ~50%. Studies are currently underway to determine the optimal mode of nicotine treatment and to investigate whether nicotinic agonists that act only on certain nicotinic receptor types may be useful. Overall, these combined approaches have the potential to lead to the development of selective nicotinic receptor drugs for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease to improve motor problems and for protection against neurodegeneration.
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