Nautilus Biotechnology and Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar Collaborate with The Michael J. Fox Foundation to Advance Single-Molecule Proteomics Research in Parkinson's Disease

• Support from The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research to advance critical research into Parkinson's disease biology • Nautilus' development of a single-molecule assay for measuring alpha-synuclein proteoforms is its latest application of Iterative Mapping method to uncover new biological insights• Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar's deep chemical biology and neurology expertise and field-leading protein standards and affinity reagents position the organizations to probe disease-associated proteoforms at unprecedented resolution

SEATTLE and DOHA, Qatar, Jan. 28, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Nautilus Biotechnology, Inc. (NASDAQ:NAUT), a company pioneering single-molecule proteome analysis; Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar (WCM-Q); and The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research (MJFF) today announced a research collaboration to study the connection between the alpha-synuclein (aSyn) protein and Parkinson's disease (PD). Supported by a $1.6 million research grant from MJFF, the high-impact project combines the Lashuel lab's expertise in the molecular and chemical biology of neurodegeneration with Nautilus' next-generation platform for measuring proteins and their functional variants, called proteoforms, at single-molecule resolution.

Understanding the many forms and modifications of alpha-synuclein is a key priority for MJFF, as these differences may improve our understanding of PD biology and variability across individuals. Through its discovery and biomarker research efforts, the Foundation supports innovative technologies to better characterize alpha-synuclein proteoforms and related pathways, with the aim of generating insights that can inform future clinical research. This work advances tools that strengthen biomarker development and, over time, help guide the design and outcomes of clinical trials.

Studies suggest that the protein aSyn may be a critical driver of PD pathogenesis and that post-translational modifications (PTMs) of the protein, including truncation and phosphorylation, could serve as possible drivers of pathogenesis and biomarkers for diagnosis. However, current proteomics approaches are limited in their ability to measure specific proteoforms of aSyn and how those proteoforms impact disease progression. To address this gap, collaborators at Nautilus, WCM-Q, and MJFF aim to develop a single-molecule assay to measure a large panel of aSyn proteoforms, thereby enabling new approaches to early detection, disease stratification, and disease monitoring for PD and related synucleinopathies.

Nautilus is pioneering a novel single-molecule platform and groundbreaking Iterative Mapping method with the potential to scale to disease targets including aSyn and tau proteins, the latter of which ...