Dr Emma Lane

• 2015 – onwards Senior Lecturer in Pharmacology, School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences
• 2009-2015, Lecturer in Pharmacology, School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences
• 2006-2009, Post-Doctoral Research Associate, Brain Repair Centre, Department of Neuroscience, Cardiff University
  Working with Prof Stephen Dunnett and Prof Anne Rosser I continued my work on L-dopa and post-transplantation dyskinesia contributing to two successful EU FP7 grant awards.
• 2004-2006, Post-Doctoral Research Associate, Units of Neuronal Survival and Basal Ganglia Pathophysiology, Lund University, Sweden.
  I spent 2 years in Sweden with the groups of Prof Patrik Brundin and Prof Angela Cenci developing, characterizing and working with a model of post-transplantation dyskinesia
• 2000-2004, PhD, King's College London, UK
  I had a BBSRC CASE award studentship with Prof Peter Jenner and Dr Sharon Cheetham (then Knoll Pharmaceuticals) on the potential of BTS 74398, a monoamine uptake inhibitor, as a possible anti-parkinsonian medication.
• 1996-2000, Pharmacology B.Sc. Honours 1st Class with industrial placement, University College London, UK.
  Specialising in neuropharmacology options and spending an industrial year at Knoll Pharmaceuticals working on the pharmacology of the anti-obesity agent sibutramine.

Research interests

Member of the School's Medicines Optimisation and Health Outcomes and Experimental therapeutics and Pharmaceutical Sciences research disciplines.

Parkinson's disease

Parkinson's disease is a largely sporadic disorder which affects around 120 000 people in the UK. It is most commonly described as a motor disorder, with the cardinal features of resting tremor, rigidity, bradykinesia and postural instability. The main pathology is the loss of the melanised dopaminergic neurons of the nigrostriatal pathway and the development of protein accumulations immunopositive for the protein a-synuclein.

I have two main research interests, straddling the clinical and pre clinical research areas.  I am interested in Parkinson’s patient outcomes and how clinical interventions can influence those outcomes.  I work closely with clinical colleagues that run the Parkinson’s service in Cardiff and Vale and Abertawe Bro Morgannog University Health Boards.  We have instituted a new electronic health record and ipad based pre assessment records.  Research is focusing on how these clinical support tools are facilitating patient care.

Secondly I am interested in how therapeutic approaches to the treatment of Parkinson’s disease cause side effects.  Many of the motor symptoms of Parkinson's disease can be well controlled in the early stages with dopaminergic drugs therapies, however as the disease develop, the main treatment for Parkinson's disease, L-dopa, causes the development of abnormal involuntary movements. These can be severely debilitating and there are currently few pharmaceutical interventions to prevent or ameliorate them. Understanding the features that predispose for the development of L-dopa induced dyskinesia may increase our ability to identify patients at greater risk and avoid or minimise them with careful management of medication. Furthermore, the effects of L-dopa may go beyond motor activation and I am interested in the possible effects of long-term L-dopa administration on motor learning and habit formation using in vivo models of PD and dyskinesia.

Not only do dyskinesia develop, but medication become less effective at treating the motor symptoms of PD as the disease progresses. Transplantation of foetal tissue into the striatum can replace the lost dopaminergic innervation and can produce remarkable improvements in motor function. However, clinical trials have identified issues that need to be carefully considered before further clinical trial of embryonic tissue or cells from alternative sources (ie stem cells) can be attempted, including reliability and reproducibility of positive results, access to sources of embryonic tissue and alternative cell types and most notably the issue of transplantation-induced side effects. Three clinical trials of transplantation with embryonic tissue have now reported the development of dyskinesia in transplanted patients unrelated to their medication, to the extent that several have required further surgical interventions to ameliorate their symptoms. The main focus of my research over the last few years has been in determining mechanisms and contributing risk factors for the development of post-transplantation dyskinesia in order that transplantation can proceed unhindered into the next phase of clinical trials.  I am now moving towards furthering our understanding of how stem cell derived sources of dopaminergic neurons can be affected by the disease and the treatment of it.