AlzForum covers new research from the laboratory of Virginia Lee, PhD, director of the Center for Neurodegenerative Disease Research. A major challenge of studying diseases marked by intracellular protein aggregates is getting those pesky clumps to form in the lab under anything resembling realistic circumstances. A study in the October 6 issue of Neuron takes Parkinson’s disease research a step forward in this direction. The Penn team developed a cell model that uses preformed α-synuclein fibrils to induce Lewy body pathology, synaptic dysfunction, and death in wild-type mouse neurons. “The fact that you can take some fibrils, toss them into primary neuron cultures, and recapitulate pathology you see in PD patients suggests you have a simple but powerful system for studying the consequences of α-synuclein pathology in a dish,” said Lee.