Department of Biochemistry

The Roberts Lab received a Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research award entitled, “Validation of blood biomarkers for the detection of Parkinson’s Disease.”

Dr. Roberts’s research team discovered 14 lipid markers in the blood that distinguish Parkinson’s disease from controls with greater than 80% accuracy. They aim to validate the utility of these markers in a new patient cohort to determine if these biomarkers can be used in the clinical setting to speed up the diagnostic process. Diagnosis of PD typically takes more than a year to reach using clinical metrics. This biomarker assay aims to reduce the time to diagnosis. This will impact the early detection of PD and aid in patient selection for clinical trials.

The Roberts Lab continues to be supported and sponsored by Emory University and Montana State University.

The Roberts Lab is in collaboration with mass technology companies with our instrumentation. Agilent Technologies, eMSion, and Bruker continue to support and help our lab thrive.