About the Authors

Judith A. Potashkin

judy.potashkin@rosalindfranklin.edu

Affiliation The Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology Department, Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science, The Chicago Medical School, North Chicago, Illinois, United States of America

Jose A. Santiago

Affiliation The Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology Department, Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science, The Chicago Medical School, North Chicago, Illinois, United States of America

Bernard M. Ravina

Affiliations Neurology Department, University of Rochester School of Medicine, Rochester, New York, United States of America, Biogen Idec, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America

Arthur Watts

Affiliation Department of Biostatistics, University of Rochester School of Medicine, Rochester, New York, United States of America

Alexey A. Leontovich

Affiliation Division of Biomedical Statistics and Informatics, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, United States of America

Competing Interests

The authors have read the journal's policy and have the following conflicts: patent application is pending and grants are pending. The patent application is Splice Variant Specific Messenger RNA Transcripts as Biomarkers of Parkinson’s Disease, (#20070087376, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/240,821 filed 9/22/11). The abstract for the patent is: “The present invention discloses a method to discover biomarkers indicative of an idiopathic neurodegenerative disease in a mammalian subject and biomarkers indicative of an idiopathic neurodegenerative disease in the mammalian subject. The biomarker comprises a splice variant mRNA of a precursor-messenger RNA (pre-mRNA) transcript of a gene in the mammalian subject wherein (a) the ratio of the amount of the splice variant mRNA to the amount of another splice variant mRNA of the same precursor-messenger RNA (pre-mRNA) transcript of the same gene is different in the mammalian subject having the neurodegenerative disease as compared to that of a control without the disease; or (b) the ratio of the amount of the splice variant mRNA to the amount of total 18S RNA is different in the mammalian subject having the neurodegenerative disease as compared to that of a control without the disease. The biomarkers can be used to diagnose neurodegenerative diseases in the subject.” One pending grant entitled “Spice Variant Risk Markers for Progressive Supranuclear Palsy” is submitted to the CurePSP Foundation. The goal of this grant is to evaluate the potential of 6 risk markers for improving the diagnosis of PSP patients and whether additional candidate markers identified in a previous study may be useful for the diagnosis of PSP. The second grant application entitled “Splice Variant Biomarkers for Parkinson’s Disease” was submitted to the Department of Defense. The goal of these studies are to test the hypothesis that the biomarkers will be useful for identifying individuals at risk for PD and identify signaling pathways that are disrupted in PD. BMR is affiliated with Biogen Idec. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: JAP. Performed the experiments: JAS AAL. Analyzed the data: JAP JAS AAL. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: BMR AW. Wrote the paper: JAP JAS AAL.